02 - Sacred Flesh

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  “If the place doesn’t erupt first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The mood is palpable. There are too many penitents here. We know how desperate the journey has made them. You saw how quick Primus Lichtman and his fervent friends were to lunge at the Sigmarites, when a dispute arose. And how eager the Sigmarites were to smack them down. How long will it be before they shove the pilgrims one step too far, and the abbey winds up in flames?”

  The door opened. “An intriguing scenario,” said a new, rich voice. A Sigmarite in well-polished armour stepped through. His eyes were intense; his face, long; his ears, wide. He squatted beside Franziskus, like a comrade.

  “I am Father Manfried Haupt,” he said. “I command these… large men with warhammers.”

  “How long have you been listening?” Franziskus asked.

  Manfried reached forward to snatch the bindings at Angelika’s wrists. He yanked on them, finding the notch, snapping the cord. He smiled malignly. “Long enough,” he said.

  He stood before Franziskus, leaving him bound. “So you think I’m an incompetent, do you?”

  Franziskus kept his head down. “I said no such thing.”

  “Not directly. But you implied it, didn’t you? You think me incapable of controlling one paltry little abbey in the middle of nowhere?”

  “If we knew we were being spied on, we would have spoken more diplomatically,” said Angelika.

  Manfried whipped round to Angelika, a razor grin slicing across his face. “So, from now on your words will be perfumed?”

  In a gesture both ironic and precise, Angelika held out her hand for Manfried. He bared his teeth and played along, heaving her to her feet. She recovered her balance and deftly concluded her move in a pose of mock daintiness. “It seems you believe something told to you by Ivo Kirchgeld. And he is a jackass of the highest order. What does that make you?”

  He grabbed her by the hair on the back of her head. “I won’t be spoken to that way.”

  She grimaced but did not cry out. “Ah yes, you’re in control, aren’t you?”

  He pushed her down to her knees. “Do you always antagonise those who hold your destiny in their hands, wench?”

  She kept her face serene, despite a tear of pain traitorously welling in her right eye. “It is my strictest rule,” she said, with voice unbroken. “What’s yours?”

  “I serve Sigmar!” he shouted. “I have no time for this—Chaos eats the fabric of the world!” He slapped her. Franziskus lunged for him. He whirled and punched the blond Stirlander in the throat. Franziskus wheezed, clutching at his jaw-line, and sank to his knees. As he battled his way back up to his feet, Manfried smashed him on the side of the face. Franziskus hit the wall and slumped to the floor. Manfried strode over to him, picked him up by the front of his tunic, and shook him. “The implements—where are they? They’re no mere curios, to be flogged off for a few pieces of gold! They’re weapons against Chaos—they can get us out off this misbegotten mountain and back into the fray!”

  Blood dribbled out from a crack in Franziskus’ lip. “Neither of us has the faintest notion of what you’re talking about,” he said.

  Manfried threw him to the ground. “Richart Pfeffer! Don’t tell me you don’t know that name!”

  “Of course,” said Angelika, drawing his attention away from Franziskus. “He was one of the pilgrims we shepherded up here.”

  “He was my man,” Manfried said. “I hired him to find the person who, posing as a pilgrim, came here and stole a set of blessed thaumaturgical instruments from the abbey’s reliquary. He suspected you, and so joined your pilgrimage in the hope of finding proof—or perhaps the implements themselves. You led him to his death, but not before he confided in this good pilgrim, this Ivo Kirchgeld.”

  Angelika laughed. “That’s absurd. We met Richart and the others completely by chance, in the middle of the Blackfire Pass, long after they’d assembled themselves into a party. If he joined the pilgrimage to track a thief, it would have to be one of the others—I’d say Ivo, wouldn’t you, Franziskus?”

  “Indubitably,” Franziskus groaned, lying on his back in the cold dirt.

  Angelika knelt at his side. “It’s a surprisingly common thing, for people to seize on the very first version of a story they hear. And they cling to it tenaciously, despite all contrary evidence.”

  Manfried twitched.

  “I understand,” said Angelika, dabbing at Franziskus’ lip with a corner of her sleeve, “it is especially prevalent among those of a religious cast of mind, who are accustomed to taking things on faith.”

  “Quiet yourself and let me think,” Manfried growled.

  “If I were you, my thinking would be as follows: is there anything else in this place worth stealing, and, if so, is Ivo Kirchgeld currently stealing it?”

  He made a fist for her. “Shut up!”

  A rap echoed through the shed’s flimsy door. “Sir?”

  “What is it?”

  The door opened. It was Bernolt, with Devorah behind him. Franziskus lifted himself up. His eyes widened. The girl was not only upright, but she was apparently strong and healthy. She wore a fresh new sister’s habit. Her skin glowed; her eyes had regained their piercing clarity.

  Devorah saw Franziskus and cried his name. She rushed through the door, but Manfried interposed himself so she couldn’t get to him.

  “What is it?” he barked.

  “Mother Elsbeth sent her,” faltered Bernolt. “To fetch this… this Angelika Fleischer and bring her to a private audience.”

  Manfried spoke through gritted teeth. “Quite impossible. Her holiness requires another treatment.”

  Devorah raised her chin up and pointed her stunning face at Manfried. “She has had another treatment. I watched as it was administered to her. I was healed by her, so I saw her condition before she was bathed in the healing mixture, as well.”

  “Just who is this?” he demanded of Bernolt.

  Devorah straightened her spine. “I am Sister Devorah. I am a devotee of Shallya. You are here at the pleasure of our most merciful goddess. And I am here to tell you that Mother Elsbeth, abbess of Heiligerberg, desires to speak with this woman, Angelika Fleischer.”

  Manfried shook his head like a spaniel flecking water off its muzzle. The girl had somehow transfixed him. He looked to Bernolt, then to his two captives.

  “Very well,” he said, “the situation is at any rate ambiguous. The blond-hair stays captive, as a surety. And find me that Ivo Kirchgeld!”

  He stormed from the shack, angrily gesticulating. After a moment of indecision, Bernolt stalked off, too, in another direction, then reversed course to take Angelika by the arm, leading her toward the abbey gate.

  His departure left Devorah inside the shack, under the questioning gaze of the Sigmarite warriors stationed to guard it. “I must speak to my friend here,” she told them. “Then I’ll return to her grace’s side.”

  They shrugged and retook their positions outside the shack. Devorah swung it gently shut. She took Franziskus’ cloak, rolled it up into a pillow, and slid it under his head. She gripped his hand in hers and looked down into his battered face.

  “Oh Franziskus,” she said.

  “You’re alive,” he managed.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve recovered.”

  “Mother Elsbeth healed me. But, oh, the terrible price she pays for it…”

  “What’s going on here? Are the sisters Manfried’s prisoners?”

  “In all but name. But Manfried is sure he acts righteously.”

  Franziskus sat up. He looked at her perfect hand, resting in his. He brought it to his lips, ready to kiss it.

  She pulled it away from him. She averted her eyes. “Franziskus,” she said.

  “Yes?” He put his arm around her. She patted it. The gesture was a touch too sisterly for Franziskus’ taste.

  “There is something I must tell you,” she said.

  In matters of wooing,
and in fact of the entire female sex, Franziskus considered himself far from expert. But even he had enough experience to know, with absolute certainty, what those seven words foretold.

  “Go on,” he said. He had never really loved her anyway, he decided.

  “I am transformed, Franziskus. Although I love you with a passion that words cannot express, and will always love you until the day I die, I cannot be with you. Shallya has reclaimed me for her own!” She threw her arms around him and held crushingly onto him, pushing her tearful face into his shoulder. Her hug put pressure on the contusions Manfried had just given him.

  “I feel the holiness in me, reverberating,” she wept. “Growing. I do have a calling. And the fact that I must sacrifice our love on the altar of Shallya’s mercy—why, that is the spiritual fuel that makes it all the more powerful!”

  “You’re hurting me,” Franziskus whispered.

  She let him go, then sobbed all the harder. He put his arm reluctantly around her.

  “You do understand, do you not?”

  “It is a matter of the gods, and they are an ineffable, eternal mystery.” Franziskus did not know what this meant, and in fact suspected that it meant nothing at all, but also was reasonably sure that it would make Devorah happy if he said it.

  Her face brightened. The tears ceased. “You do understand!”

  Angelika stood just inside the threshold of Mother Elsbeth’s cramped cell. Bernolt stepped past her and closed the door behind him.

  “No,” said the thin, elderly woman perched on the edge of the pallet, her features lost in shadow. Though elderly, she seemed quite hale. Her teeth were particularly striking: each one straight, firmly in place, as perfectly white as a young baby’s. Angelika could only presume that this was the vaunted Mother Elsbeth. Her voice and carriage suggested a certain authority, but even so, Angelika could not see what it was about her that would inspire hundreds of people to risk death, journeying dozens of leagues into this malign, unforgiving wilderness, just for a chance to stand in her presence.

  “No,” Elsbeth repeated.

  Bernolt realised that she was addressing him. “Pardon me, your holiness?”

  “You will leave the two of us to speak privately.”

  “But—”

  “Go.”

  Bernolt addressed Angelika. “I’ll be just outside the door, waiting,” he said, sounding a softly threatening note.

  The old woman watched the guard leave. “He thinks you’ll do me harm,” said the old woman. A dusty beam of light escaped from a narrow window; she tilted her head slightly and it fell across her face long enough to illumine an odd, ironic smile.

  “Why would I want to do that?” said Angelika.

  “Devorah told me all about you.” Elsbeth patted the bedding next to her, bidding Angelika to sit. Her touch freed a cloud of dust and sent it spinning up into the air.

  Angelika remained in place.

  The old woman shifted to face her better. A cough rattled around her voice box. “You are wary,” she said.

  “It is a prudent stance to take, when summoned to the side of an influential person who has yet to make her purpose clear.”

  Elsbeth shook her head ruefully. “Influential? Me?”

  “Your word was good enough to get me out of a cell. Maybe my perspective is limited, but that seems like power to me.”

  Elsbeth bowed her head. “I am a prisoner too.”

  “Then why do they fear you?”

  “Fear?” She rubbed at her eyes. “They do not fear me—only my departure. This Manfried, the poor tortured soul—he thinks my poor tired bones will end his exile.”

  Angelika stuck out a hand to lean against the sloped roof of the abbess’ cramped quarters. “How so?”

  Elsbeth told her about Father Manfried Haupt—his expectations of presiding over the family cathedral, his expulsion from Averheim, his arrival in Heiligerberg, and his decision to put himself in charge of its miracles.

  Angelika fidgeted impatiently while she spoke. She waited until she was sure the old woman was done. “I don’t know what fit of babbling nonsense Devorah succumbed to, but if you think I’m capable of ridding you of this enemy, you’ve been seriously misinformed.”

  Elsbeth stood and shuffled to her, placing a dry hand on her cheek. “I am a high priestess of Shallya. I would never ask you to harm another person.”

  “Even your captor?” Angelika tried not to flinch from the old woman’s touch. Up close, she smelled like a sneeze that hangs in the air.

  “Shallya forbid! My only hope for the poor boy is that he learn the difference between the greater good and his own desires.”

  “So if you don’t want me to strike against Haupt on your behalf, what do you want?”

  She shuddered and lost her balance, tipping toward Angelika. Angelika caught her. She righted the abbess quickly before stepping back. The old woman had backed her into a corner. She felt its cobwebs brushing into her hair. “I want you to speak to Devorah. She has seen the toll it takes on me, to heal this endless throng Manfried has so capriciously attracted here.”

  “If you want something from me, you’ll have to come out and tell me yourself.”

  “I can scarcely describe it. Perhaps I will let you attend to me, as I endure another round of healings. Then you will see the suffering.”

  “I thought you priestess types enjoyed suffering.”

  “If you enjoy it, it isn’t suffering, is it?” Elsbeth spasmed as a series of coughs wracked her body. She gasped. Angelika sat hesitantly beside her and applied a few gentle thumps to her back. Elsbeth took Angelika’s hand in hers. “Do you think me some faith-crazed flagellant, mistaking agony for epiphany: Suffering is suffering, and over the years I’ve done more than most. More than my share. And I wish it to stop. Again, I implore you to ask Devorah what she has seen. I cannot share the gruesome specifics; I am too ashamed.”

  Elsbeth told her of the nature of her healing gift. Of the healing baths Manfried forced her to take.

  “No,” said Angelika.

  “Beg pardon?”

  Angelika stood. “I finally see what you want.” She tried to look out the smudgy window. “I won’t do it.”

  The holy woman bolted up and moved in close. “But Devorah says you are a robber of graves. She has seen you paw through the bloodiest of corpses for a few mere coins!”

  Angelika spun to face her, staring down into her milky little eyes. “Yes, I earn my living in a way that all fine people despise. That doesn’t mean I’ll do anything. Specifically, I will not kill you.”

  Elsbeth’s knotted hands grabbed up big folds of Angelika’s tunic. “You must.”

  “I will not.”

  “I beg you.”

  “No.”

  “It would be an act of sheerest mercy.”

  “I reject all faiths and theologies, old woman. My rules are my own. Chief among them is a rule against murder.”

  “You have never killed?”

  “I do make an exception for people who try to kill me, but somehow I doubt you’re up to it.”

  “How can I convince you?”

  “There is nothing you can offer me that will make me murder you.”

  Mother Elsbeth tottered back from her, recovering her composure. “You will not waver?”

  “If you’re so anxious to die, why not order one of your fellow priestesses to do the job?”

  “They’d refuse.”

  “Then don’t tell them. Have them brew a poison for you; tell them it’s medicine.”

  “They’d never be deceived; they know their herbs better than I.”

  “Have Devorah do the deed.”

  “I cannot stain that innocent soul.”

  “But mine is already soiled enough, so one more little slaying won’t matter?”

  “It’s a costly favour I ask of you, I know. If there was another I could turn to, I would not trouble a stranger.” Elsbeth moved to the foot of her bed and pulled out a wooden trunk. She bu
mped it along the stone floor. She lifted the lid and reached inside, withdrawing an armload of cotton robes, each as plain and unadorned as the one she wore. She held them out for Angelika to take. Angelika twitched her nose in annoyance but accepted the mound of clothing. Elsbeth again stooped into the trunk, this time taking out a bundled blue scarf, dripping with tassels. She dropped it onto her bed and unrolled it, flipping loose a dagger with a six-inch blade of gleaming steel. It was an expensive display piece, its hilt gilded, its pommel cast in the shape of a wolf’s head, with gleaming ruby chips for eyes. The materials were valuable, but it was the craftsmanship that would make the piece eminently saleable. Angelika guessed that she could get seventy-five crowns for it—a hundred, if she dickered well.

  “That’s a fine piece.”

  Elsbeth turned it over in her hand. “It was given to me decades ago, by a warrior I healed. I wanted it but could not explain why. It is beautiful, isn’t it, in its own terrible way? I told myself I was keeping it so that it could shed no more blood. I’d offer it to you, but I suppose you’d be offended.”

  “Good thing you’re not offering it, then.”

  She handed the knife to Angelika, hilt-first. “It would be helpful, when you want to escape…”

  “We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “When Manfried has his mind fixed, he is hard to budge.”

  Angelika weighed the dagger in her hand. “I doubt this blade ever shed much blood. It’s an art piece, not balanced properly for fighting.”

  “But in a tough spot it would be better to have it than not.”

  Angelika shrugged. “Yes, but what of it? I won’t do as you ask. Not for a knife, not for any price.”

  Elsbeth curled her fingers around the hilt and look back the knife. “I wish to trade this weapon for a different favour.”

  “You buy and sell jewels and other items of value, yes?”

  “I retrieve and sell them.”

  “You have heard of holy relics?”

  “Of course.”

  “And that sometimes these items are the very bones of famous priests and priestesses? Finger hones, cross-sections of arms and legs, even bits of skull…”

  “I have seen such things. They are hard to properly value.”