The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  “His finger moved, Your Excellency,” said Eigio.

  “So it did. Sister Meriam’s nostrums have had their effect, as she promised us in her letter, but faster than expected. Strange.” As he bit his lower lip in a gesture more common to children puzzling over an unanswered question, he looked startlingly young and oddly frightening, but the shiver of fear passed quickly.

  “Very well, Eigio.” He walked to the door and paused there. “Let no person enter. Say his condition has taken a turn for the worse and that he is near death, and on no account let any soul hear him speak. Your meals will be brought as usual and a guard will be posted outside the door. You are not to leave this room again. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. It will be done as you say, Your Excellency.”

  “I am sure it will be.”

  Eigio shut the door behind him, closing them in.

  “Where am I?” Zacharias asked, and the man looked at him in surprise, as if he had forgotten Zacharias was there.

  “Nay, Brother,” he said, wrinkling his brow in distress. “Only Presbyter Hugh is to speak to you, he made that clear. You may ask all you want, but I can say nothing.”

  Zacharias had nothing left to do but wiggle his fingers and toes as he surveyed his domain: the bed, a bench and cot for the servant, a side table with a basin and pitcher of water, and a garland hanging over the door. On the bench rested a tray of oddments including a ball of bright red yarn and two large hooked wooden needles, a wine cup, a chess set carved of ivory, a bowl and spoon, a bundle of rosemary with a sprinkling of pale blue flowers among the spiky leaves, and a writing knife, stoppered inkhorn, and several uncut goose quills.

  Two shutters leaned against the whitewashed walls beside a single embrasure. Outside it was day.

  “Where am I?” Zacharias repeated, but Eigio turned mute and would answer none of his queries, only gave him a ghastly sweet mead to drink.

  He slept, and when he woke it was dark, the chamber illuminated by a single candle whose light gilded the pale head of the lord Eigio had called Presbyter Hugh. He had pulled the bench up to the side table, on which a sloping writing desk had been set. He worked industriously, pen scratching as he wrote on vellum, his attention fixed on his labors as he copied onto the parchment from an exemplar out of Zacharias’ sight beyond Hugh’s left arm. He was a remarkably handsome man, with a face that light cherished and women no doubt swooned over, that wealth of golden hair, and his limbs and figure so well proportioned that he seemed more angel than man.

  All at once Zacharias knew who the man was and, therefore, where he must be.

  “Am I in Darre? How did I get here?”

  Hugh set down the pen and used the penknife to scrape off a blot before turning to regard him with that same pensive expression Zacharias had seen before.

  “I have been sitting beside you for half the night, Brother Zacharias. Did you know you talk quite volubly in your sleep? Yet in such a disjointed fashion that I am left puzzled. What can you tell me of Prince Sanglant?”

  Almost he blurted out Hathui’s accusations, but he stopped himself. He was helpless and alone. This was not the time to make enemies.

  “I left the service of Prince Sanglant to become a servant to Brother Marcus. He promised to instruct me in the secrets of the mathematici.”

  “Did he do so?”

  “He did! He had begun to teach me about the motion of the heavens and the glorious architecture of the world. When I had mastered those, then he promised to teach me how to weave the crowns.”

  “Did he!” Hugh glanced toward the unshuttered window but looked back as quickly. “Instead you were stung by a dread creature called an akreva and paralyzed by its venom. Brother Marcus saw fit to send you back to us, as the bearer of a message to the Holy Mother.”

  “How came I here? Am I in Darre?”

  “Brother Lupus, it seems, had deserted Marcus. He was to bear the message, but in his absence Marcus chose to send you—as you are now—instead. How did it happen that Brother Lupus abandoned his duty?”

  “I do not know, Your Excellency.”

  “You do not know Brother Lupus?”

  “I do not know why he deserted the company, Your Excellency. He fled one night, while we slept in a hostel in Qahirah. That is all I know.”

  “Is that all you know? Truly?”

  His gentle smile made Zacharias shudder, and that movement spawned another as his hands spasmed and his feet twitched. It was a warning. If he could survive this paralysis, if it were wearing off, then he might hope to escape. He had no loyalty to Wolfhere, after all.

  “We stayed at a hostel where Wolfh—where Brother Lupus had stayed many years before.”

  “He traveled in Qahirah before?”

  “So he said. I don’t know why. The innkeeper recognized him. He had done the innkeeper a favor many years ago, so we were well treated and given a splendid feast that night and a palatable wine, as much as we could drink. That night I had to rise to use the necessary. When returning to my bed, I happened to overhear a conversation between Brother Marcus and Sister Meriam. Marcus no longer trusted Brother Lupus. He thought Brother Lupus had spent too long in Prince Sanglant’s company and seemed unwilling to return to the fold. Sister Anne had commanded that Brother Lupus be sent back to her once we located the crown which lies beyond the old ruins of Kartiako. It was the next morning that we discovered he was gone. Perhaps he overheard their conversation as well. Perhaps he knew they were suspicious of him, and so he fled.”

  “If so, it seems their suspicions were correct. Wolfhere.” He savored the name as he might a sweet wine. “It seems that the king’s distrust of him was deserved.”

  So spoke the man who had, according to Hathui, corrupted the king by insinuating a daimone into his body! Zacharias held his tongue. It was all he could do not to blurt out the accusation just to see Hugh’s reaction, but instinct saved him. Hugh was not Bulkezu but something different, better or worse he could not tell.

  “Are you a mathematicus?” he asked instead. “Can you teach me now that I no longer travel with Brother Marcus? He promised that I would receive teaching if I joined his cause.”

  “Is that your wish, Brother Zacharias? To receive teaching?”

  “It is! More than anything!”

  “Yet you have not told me what you know of Prince Sanglant. And of an Eagle whose name is Hathui. You spoke her name while you slept. What do you know of her? Is it possible you have seen her? She was once King Henry’s trusted counselor, but rumor has it she murdered Helmut Villam after a lover’s quarrel and fled in disgrace.”

  How difficult it was to remain silent! But Zacharias held his tongue. He struggled and writhed in his heart, but he held his tongue.

  “A man who brought me information about this Eagle, Hathui, would be accepted as a trustworthy member of my household. Such a man could expect to receive training in any craft his heart desired. Even as a mathematicus. For I am one such. I could take him on as a discipla. I could teach him how to weave the crowns, and much more besides.”

  At the price of betraying his sister.

  Hadn’t he once said: “I will do anything for the person who will teach me”?

  He shut his eyes, and held his tongue, although he knew his silence betrayed him. Where desire and loyalty warred, loyalty won, and he possessed no glib words to worm his way out of this confrontation. He had probably lost the one thing he desired above all else—that he might learn the secrets of the heavens—and yet it mattered not. He had left Hathui behind, but he would never betray her.

  Never.

  “Ah,” said Hugh. “I will leave you to think it over.”

  He stoppered the inkhorn, cleaned the quill, and tidied up his writing things before he left. In his place, Eigio returned, blowing out the candle before he lay down to sleep.

  In that darkness Zacharias smiled to discover what blossomed unexpectedly in his heart. Peace.

  Hathui had accused him of
never being content, but he was content now. He had saved Elene’s life despite his fear. He had stood his ground in honor of the bond between him and Hathui. Weren’t these the actions of a good man? A decent man? A courageous man?

  In the morning, Eigio propped him up against the wall and he was delighted to discover that he could use his arms well enough to spoon gruel into his own mouth. He was ravenous. He had lost so much weight that his body seemed skin stretched over bone, and when he tried to stand, his legs hadn’t the strength to hold him. Only a handful of days ago he could not swallow or speak. If he ate and rested, he would recover his strength.

  The afternoon’s meal of gruel and wine made him unaccountably sleepy. He drifted in and out of a doze as his skin burned and chilled at intervals and his tongue seemed swollen, choking him. Night came and departed while he napped and woke, head cloudy, hands tingling. Light returned, and he lay on his bed and struggled to move, but his limbs felt as heavy as stone, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  Presbyter Hugh appeared suddenly, splendid in court robes and a scarlet cape that rippled like water every time he turned.

  “Give him the antidote, and then bring him,” he said, and left.

  Eigio poured sour wine down his throat. Half of it spilled down his cheeks and trickled along his jaw, but the servingman wiped him up and clad him in a plain shift, the kind of shroud a poor man would be buried in.

  He couldn’t move.

  Servants arrived and rolled him onto a stretcher. In this manner he jounced down the hall, down stairs, up and down and in such a twisting, turning, crazy route that he became dizzy. Bile burned at the back of his throat, but he could not swallow it down or force it up. He could not even blink, but must stare up at plain and fancy woodwork both, and once a stretch of bright blue sky, until the jostling brought him along an arcade open to the air and surrounded by an ocean of murmuring water. Yet these were the mutterings of humankind, because the servants bore him past multitudes whose faces flashed past as quickly as those of the painted cherubs laughing and weeping above him among the vaults.

  A huge crowd had gathered, but where, and why, he did not know.

  They crossed under a lintel and came into a space absolutely packed with women and men and rank with their perfumes and sweat and the headache-inducing bite of incense rolling in clouds past his streaming eyes. The ceiling flew away from him, arching up to an impossible height from which stared solemn angels and gloomy saints with huge eyes and glowing hands and heads.

  Had he died at last and arrived at the Chamber of Light?

  Whispers teased his ears as the servants bore him through the crowd.

  “Look! That’s the cripple who was found a month ago.”

  “He can’t talk or move, poor creature, yet he lives.”

  “They say he’s possessed by the Enemy.”

  Male voices rose in unison.

  The angel spoke to the chosen one:

  Rejoice!

  Receive the light for the glory of God illuminates you.

  Rejoice!

  A dome opened above him, the gulf of air so vast that he could scarcely see the painted figures gazing benignly down upon him, who was smallest and least. Folks gaped at him but his bearers did not falter and he was borne forward under the dome and crossed under a lower arch to the apse, where the crowd thinned and he was set down in the midst of a company of brightly dressed nobles. One man stood with his back to Zacharias, his figure limned by the light streaming through a tall window. He turned. The sun dazzled Zacharias’ eyes as the man knelt beside him. He was clad in gold, and the gold cloth was sewn with gems; a heavy gold crown sat on his head and a gold torque encircled his throat. He had brown hair chased with silver and the calm, handsome, bearded face of a man in his middle years. Truly, he was as glorious as the sun.

  Floating above, faces swam in and out of Zacharias’ sight: a pretty young woman crowned and robed in splendor equal to that of the kneeling man; Presbyter Hugh; a woman robed in white with a delicate gold torque at her throat and an embroidered golden cap concealing her hair.

  The choir finished. Silence trembled beneath the gulf of air.

  The crowned man drew a red gillyflower across Zacharias’ lips and after that a tickling branch of yew.

  “If God favor this day,” he said in a powerful voice that surely carried all the way to the back, “if the Lord and Lady look kindly upon the birth today of this new Holy Empire, I pray They will heal this poor unfortunate. Let my kiss be for him the breath of life.”

  He bent down and kissed Zacharias on the lips. He reeked of a heady perfume so strong that it tickled in Zacharias’ nostrils and made him, all at once, unbidden, unexpected, and just as the crowned man sat back, sneeze.

  An audible gasp burst from the assembly.

  “Catch it! Catch it!” cried a woman excitedly. “The demon has been expelled!”

  Zacharias burned all over as he stared up at the crowned man. Ai, God, surely it could only be one man, so glorious and so proud. The man whom Hathui respected above all others. Her king.

  He struggled and found that his limbs worked after all. The crowned man rose to his feet, and Zacharias got his elbows under him and with immense effort, straining, levered himself up.

  “Your Majesty!” he said hoarsely.

  “He speaks! He speaks!”

  “A miracle! The Emperor has healed him!”

  All through the cathedral voices drowned him in a thunder of exclamations and joyful weeping. King Henry stared down at Zacharias without expression, his gaze that same calm facade, but suddenly he noticed that the king’s eyes seemed first green and then blue and then green again as though he were both himself and some other creature entirely.

  Hathui’s anguished testimony crowded back into his mind, for with his excellent memory he had certainly forgotten nothing she had said to Prince Sanglant, although it was difficult to think with such a roar around him and so many bodies pressing forward to look at him, at the miracle. He was the cripple the new emperor had healed.

  “Take him,” said Hugh’s voice, almost lost in the uproar.

  The stretcher rocked and he rose into the air, reaching, grasping, gasping.

  “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”

  They shoved past the yammering hordes and hurried out through a side door and then by halls and courtyards heedless of his pleading to be let down, to return to the king who was not king any longer but now emperor. All that way he heard, fading, the noise of the multitude and, in counterpoint, a hymn.

  Sing a new song of praise!

  Lay the old man aside and take on the new.

  Glory! Glory! Glory!

  They came at last to a silent chamber where sunlight streamed through open windows to illuminate murals painted on the wall. They set him down on a pallet in a corner behind two handsome chairs placed on a low dais, drew a curtain, and left him alone except for two guards at the door.

  There he wept, but for what reason he was not sure.

  A miracle!

  Maybe he wept for the lie.

  3

  STRONGHAND’S ship sailed into Rikin Fjord on a calm day in late spring. Deacon Ursuline was among those who came to the strand to greet him, and she looked hale and healthy, as did all those who labored in the fields and pastures.

  “My lord,” she said, inclining her head respectfully. He had learned to interpret human facial expressions and it appeared that she was actually glad to see him. “We have received word of your triumphs in Alba. I pray that some few of the young people I am training in the way of God may be sent to that land to bring the Light to those who worship the Enemy.”

  “The queen of Alba is dead,” he agreed, “and her heirs with her. If there are any tree sorcerers left, they have fled into the wilderness and the high country. I do not wish to lose you, Deacon, because you keep the peace here in my birthplace, but if there are any disciplas you wish to send to Alba, I will see that they will with the next ships th
at journey there.”

  “You are generous, my lord.”

  “Perhaps. If belief in your God makes the Alban people obedient and prosperous, then it is worthwhile to have them believe.”

  “It is true that good deeds are most fruitful when they rise from a righteous heart, but you do the work of God despite your disbelief, my lord.” She looked past him at the group of clerics disembarking down a ramp. “It seems you have brought clerics of your own, my lord. What are these?”

  “They have come to seek the wisdom of the WiseMothers, although I do not believe they understand what they will find. Make them welcome, Deacon, and feed them. I must give my report to OldMother.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “She will be glad to hear it, my lord.”

  He had taken a step away but turned back, caught by her tone and the odd choice of words.

  She anticipated him. “We have been good stewards of this land, my lord, as you will see, and have served you faithfully. You have been gone for a long time, so I have gotten into the habit of consulting with OldMother when I have questions.”

  “Have you?”

  “We have much to learn from each other.”

  “As do I, it seems.”

  She glanced at him sharply and pushed her scarf back from her head self-consciously. Although her face and hands were clean, her nails had dirt under them and the hem of her robe was stained, as though she had recently come from the gardens. “Does this displease you, my lord?” Her tone was not at all submissive. Quite the contrary.

  He bared his teeth, the merest flash, and had the pleasure of seeing her eyes widen in alarm and, an instant later, an ironic smile lift her lips.

  “Had OldMother not wished to speak with you, she would never have allowed you to set foot in her hall,” he answered. “So be it.” Yet as he strode up to Oldmother’s hall, he puzzled over her words. It should not have surprised him that Old Mother would speak with the one who stood as OldMother for the Soft Ones, weak as they were, but nevertheless the comment disquieted him. No son of the tribe entered Oldmother’s hall without her invitation, and her invitation came only to those sons who would lead, breed, or die. He had never heard of any time in all the long years since the RockChildren walked the Earth that one among the OldMothers had spoken to humans. Why now?