The Book of Seven Hands: A Foreworld SideQuest (The Foreworld Saga)

by Anderson, Barth

  “Let me take a look and see if there is fresh bleeding,” Paracelsus said.

  “See for yourself, there is none. But I am now in terrible pain,” Alejo said with a jaunty laugh, eyes fixed on Paracelsus. “Exhausted. Deep in my bones. Spiritually, my dear sorcerer.”

  Paracelsus stretched, reached for his green bottle of laudanum and then handed it to Alejo. “All right, all right. How is your knee?”

  “Better. Painful, as I shake off the stiffness, but leagues better.”

  Alejo tapped out a “unicorn pill” of laudanum, as he called it, and when Paracelsus turned away to squeeze Alejo’s toes and feet, checking circulation and reflexes, Alejo tapped out nine or ten more pellets and pocketed them.

  Basilio saw the palming and gave Alejo a conspiratorial grin, then shook his finger. Secretly, though, he didn’t like this incessant use of the sorcerer’s laudanum. It seemed safe, miraculous even—but Alejo seemed different too. Days of consuming the pellets had changed him, and Basilio remembered the apothecary—how his first and most treasured sword had been stolen from him and recovered by the don and Basilio only after great pain. Joyeux. A small joke, and not a joke at all. Named for Lancelot’s sword, that espada was given to him by his teacher when he was thirteen years old.

  Where was his beloved Don Manuel?

  Basilio shook away the memory. This inactivity was making him soft, more vulnerable to hard thoughts and worry. He made sure his herb-woman disguise still smelled clean enough to wear and then said, “Alejo? Be ready by tomorrow at sundown. Paracelsus, you have until Alejo leaves to finish the translation.”

  Paracelsus crunched his apple. “Fear not. Alchemists are accustomed to burning candles long into the night.”

  Alejo’s eyes were already glassy and his face flushed. He was astride the unicorn now. “Don’t worry about me,” Alejo said, his voice brimming with excitement. “I’m ready right now, hermano.”

  Behind the mansion of Don Porfirio, the stables and garden were submerged in a pool of shadows and the yard was empty, just as the haggard knight was told it would be.

  He stalked through the dark, boots silent without the spurs, and he set a gloved hand upon the slave entrance. It had been left unlocked. The door scraped across the wood threshold as he pushed. With it partway open, the knight slipped inside, smelling the kitchen’s garlic and onion, and the disgusting smell of sweaty slaves.

  “Why would you betray your master and come to me?” César had asked la señora the night before.

  She was agitated and kept wringing her hands. “This one is not betraying her master,” she explained. “She does his bidding.”

  “He asked you to come here?”

  “Yes. Because ‘Don’ Porfirio is a coward and a false knight.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand what this is about.”

  “There is something wrong with that Basilio,” she said. “This slave saw it with her own two eyes. He may come from noble blood, but he is not human.”

  César dismissed this as typical slave superstition and said, “So the don sent you to me.”

  “That one is a ferocious swordsman, so Don Porfirio is afraid of Basilio,” la señora said. “But it’s not just him. All three are monsters. Alejo eats the doctor’s drugs all day and speaks like a crazy person. And the doctor is called the ‘Italian sorcerer.’ An alchemist and a heathen astrologer. My master will do nothing about this witchcraft in his own home.”

  “He’s in a bind. He swore to protect them in his house,” César said.

  “He loved them at first, but now that their master, Don Manuel, doesn’t seem to be coming, Porfirio is afraid of Basilio.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this one told him what she saw with her own two eyes. With his shirt off. He is not a thing of this world. But Don Porfirio is not a man. He is so afraid of what Basilio is—so afraid that he asked this one to take care of it for him,” la señora said with scorn.

  “He will not defend his own house.”

  “Why would he? It’s not his estate. He purchased it from the Cataluña Inquisición, who took it from my old master, the esteemed Moishe ben Enoch. They did not believe he really converted.” La señora looked away with her serious and sorrowful eyes, seeming to gaze into a terrible future. “This one was taken from a good Christian converso master and sold to a coward who has the cheek to purchase his title with money.” She straightened to her full height and looked César in the eye. “I hate the Inquisición and this new Spain, and I hate every man in that house, señor caballero.”

  She went on to tell him that Basilio was sneaking out—for what reason, she could not discern. They decided to execute their plans the first night that Basilio happened to leave, and the haggard knight arranged the rest.

  César had chosen his two rondel daggers for this mission. He loved these weapons like stout brothers or rich uncles. Forged for punching through helmets and mail shirts, the rondels had never failed him. Slow-stepping down the servants’ narrow passageway, he held them as he might two espadas. He had to turn himself sideways like a French dancer; his massive shoulders were almost touching either wall. Except for the faint creaks beneath the knight’s boots, the mansion around him was silent—just as the slave had said it would be.

  The servant’s passage led him into a tiled hallway. The tiled hallway opened into the atrium.

  A shadow stood near the front door. The house was supposed to be empty. Daggers up, he stopped, letting his eyes adjust.

  La señora was standing in the dark like a statue of the Madonna, watching him. She pointed to a set of shut double doors, which undoubtedly would lead him to his quarry.

  César waved at her urgently to be gone, and, once she had fled up the stairs, he used a sturdy dagger blade to open the door, peered through the crack and saw firelight against one wall, and then, sticking his head in, glanced about the opulent room. From behind, he could see a tall, wing-back chair and the Toreador’s wool blanket. The Toreador’s striped socks. He could see the Toreador’s sword on the long wooden table to his left, and he could hear the Toreador’s snoring. Perfect. Spinning the daggers in his hands so they were gripped for downward plunging, César raised them and stepped in silence up to the chair.

  But then his face was scalding, burning with fire.

  A second before the pain hit him, something strange had distracted Don César. He would later realize he’d seen a flash of bright coals some forty feet away before he felt coals scorching his cheeks and mouth. It was a reflection in a mirror that he’d seen, a flash across the glass. Flying coals. Alejo grinning like a crazed ape in the high-backed chair before him, his scarred mouth twisted in delight. Then Alejo was flinging something backward over his head, straight into the knight’s face. Searing, singeing bursts of orange hit César’s eyes. His lips, cheeks, and neck were burning in pain.

  César gave a cry of surprise and outrage. To his horror, the hot coals were melting into his mustache’s bristling hair, clinging there and frying the tender skin of his mouth and lips. He howled and dropped his right-hand dagger, clawing at the hot coals and cinders on his face with a gloved hand. Then he blinked hard and squinted to see through hot ash what was happening now in the room.

  Shoving the high-backed chair at him, Alejo was leaping off to the left toward the espada, just a shadow flitting before the fireplace. A cast-iron brazier was clanging about on the floor and settling at the don’s feet. Then Alejo was gone, dissolving into the dark of the room, and before César could peer into the shadows, his eyes scrunched tight against his will.

  “You whoreson devil!” he shouted, staggering blindly toward the table, hoping to put himself between Alejo and the espada. “Where are you?”

  “Over here. Follow the sounds. Follow the sounds I’m making!” Alejo rapped the tabletop with his sword.

  César whirled, forced his eyes open and saw El Toreador on the other side of the table with the same Toledo-make in hand as the last time they’d fa
ced each other. “Nothing’s changed in six years. You still fight like a graceless, desperate mongrel,” the haggard knight shouted.

  “It’s in my blood.”

  César put his boot on the table edge and shoved it at Alejo, who grabbed his end with one hand, shoving the table back to keep from being pinned against the wall.

  Alejo said, “You’ve come for the Book of the Seven Hands?”

  César grinned and looked like something from the pits of hell, with his smoldering mustache and the burned, melting, wrinkling skin about his mouth. “Alejo, keep pace. Look! Your master’s book is gone. Long gone.”

  Alejo looked in panic. The table was empty where Paracelsus and the ancient book usually sat together.

  “I have it and the alchemist’s translation.” César gave the table a huge check with his whole body, slamming Alejo back until his wounded hip had been rammed against the wall. “And I have the alchemist and the Great Basilio.” He shoved again. “Now I’ve come for you.”

  Alejo reached under the table and flipped it side over side at the knight. “You don’t have Basilio.”

  César retreated a step to avoid being hit by the spinning table and, with one boot, stomped it until it was lying topside down between them. “Indeed, I do.” Or he would soon.

  “I doubt it. You’re not quite dead enough to have tangled with Basilio. But tell me something.”

  “What, dog?”

  Stepping on the table’s underside, Alejo lunged, sword point hitting César square in the heart with a loud, hollow thunk. “Breastplate. Damn it.” They sparred back and forth over the table. “Was it you who killed Don Manuel, you tedious bucket of suet?”

  Both were large men, but, taller by a head, César slapped aside Alejo’s sword and dove at him, seized him in a one-arm tackle and crushed him against the wall. “No. But I’m quite certain I know who did.”

  With Alejo’s sword arm trapped under César’s, the knight kneed Alejo in the injured hip hard. César did it again, once more in the hip and twice in the knee.

  There was something different. Wrong. A madness in El Toreador’s eyes. His old nemesis was sweating hard, almost frothing like a horse. What was causing that?

  César pinned Alejo against the wall and said, “He was killed by La Inquisición.”

  “Oh? That masturbating archbishop of yours had it done?”

  In fury at the blasphemy, César drove the rondel dagger up toward Alejo’s belly.

  But Alejo clutched that wrist before the dagger could gut him. With the quickness of a fish wriggling free of a fisherman’s hand, Alejo slipped through César’s one-armed embrace and dropped into a crouch at his boots. With terrible speed, Alejo yanked his sword arm free and, guiding the blade along the knight’s breastplate, pointed his sword into the bony ridge over César’s left eye. The knight reared back in horror and agony, but Alejo stood, wrestling to keep the sword point in place, driving and twisting it straight into the eye socket.

  Screaming like an animal, César reeled back, leather cape flaring and blood pouring down his left cheek from beneath his palm.

  “Feel the echoing glory, castrado!” Alejo shouted. He was sweating hard and the wild glint in his eye made him look drunk. His mood and demeanor seemed to be changing by the moment. Alejo demanded, “Tell me where the alchemist is! Did the whore-don sell out the Switzer too? I’ll kill Porfirio for this!”

  César prayed to the Savior, glaring at Alejo with his one good eye and scooping up the second rondel so that he had both in hand now.

  Alejo charged with his sword held shockingly low. César couldn’t believe his fortune. After the fight at the chaparral farm, he’d bettered himself as a duelist with daggers and la espada corta specifically because of Alejo El Toreador. Even with an eye gouged out, César could see what to do. He parried Alejo’s espada, knocking the blade low to the left. For the next five passes, Alejo was reduced to fighting to get his sword in front of him again, but César wouldn’t allow it, until finally Alejo’s upper body was completely exposed. In a desperate attempt to end the fight, César delivered a sweeping, braining double blow with the hammerlike pommels of both rondels to Alejo’s temple. He didn’t expect to connect. With his lightning reflexes, Alejo should have parried. Like the magician he was, he should have produced a hidden weapon from up his sleeve, a candelabra, a goblet, a feathered quill with which he would astonishingly parry the rondels and escape into thin air as he always did. But not this time. Alejo’s mop of red hair jerked back with the blow and he fell like a tree, head bouncing twice on the wooden floor. Then complete stillness.

  César stood over the body, his own face smelling of burnt skin, and threads of smoke still rising from what was left of his mustache. He knelt, tugged off his gloves and lifted Alejo’s eyelids. The blue eyes were lifeless and no breath could be felt against the back of César’s bare hand. He felt for a pulse at Alejo’s throat. Then upon his wrists.

  El Toreador was dead.

  César stumbled across the room to the remaining upright table and sat down hard on a wooden bench, leaning back against the wall. He covered his bloody, mutilated eye with his bare hand and stared absently at the curious green bottle on the floor next to the high-backed chair.

  As he always did after a fight, he prayed his thanks to the Savior and the Holy Virgin for granting him life, but as he crossed himself and whispered to them, his heart was filled with despair, not gratitude. An age of his life had come to a close. Don Manuel was dead. Now Alejo. There was only one foe left alive that was worthy of the haggard knight.

  And that man was about to undergo a humiliation unworthy of them both.

  JULY 27, 1524

  VACANANA, CATALUÑA

  The old herb-woman, hunched and lame, followed in deliberate steps behind several families of weeping gitanos who were running to the chapel, their bright clothes disheveled as they clawed at themselves and screamed their laments.

  A knight and his squire, both in their teens, stood at the top of the chapel steps, admitting mourners to see the fallen hero. As the old woman made her way up the steps, she could hear the knight speaking to his squire.

  “Nobody mourns like the gitanos do.”

  The knight wore a youth’s thin, patchy beard studded with bright red pimples and sounded as though he were trying hard to sound world-weary.

  The herb-woman limped up the chapel steps, her great bosom heaving with every wheezing breath.

  “Alejo whored, yes? With the gitanos, he whored?”

  “Oh, he whored. He whored and whored.”

  “God forgive his tortured, pathetic soul,” the squire said with longing and admiration for Alejo. “Does the Great Basilio whore?”

  “Oh, he whores too. A sinner and a fornicator. God be with you, grandmother.”

  The old herb-woman wheezed a phlegmy coughing fit, trying to speak, then waved the unspoken words away like gnats.

  “Help her inside, galán. She seems to be having trouble tonight.”

  The squire gave the old midwife his skinny arm and let her through the dark chapel’s atrium and narthex. A few steps inside the golden lamp-lit nave, the body of Alejo Lope El Toreador could be seen on the altar steps, laid out on a dais and surrounded by three families of plaintive gitanos. She patted the squire’s hand and shooed him back to his post, again hacking and waving the air by way of thanking him.

  The old herb-woman turned to watch them talking, glanced at the heels of the knight and saw his telltale red spurs.

  Don César, I can smell you here, Basilio thought beneath his midwife’s scarf.

  It felt like someone else’s dream to see the final resting of his old friend, since, when the two were nineteen years old and serving in the Italian Wars, Basilio and Alejo were killed repeatedly. Alejo died the most, but Basilio usually died the flashier deaths. They died so many times, in fact, that it became a matter of pride to read the broadsheets that listed them as killed in battle while drinking with Don Manuel and his tercia of s
oldiers, pouring libations and eulogizing themselves.

  But there he is. Basilio crossed himself and kept his head bowed under the sackcloth bonnet as he approached. Dead so much later, I suppose, than I ever expected.

  He pushed his way to the dais with the families here and could see, now, the wound that must have killed Alejo, an ugly blue flower of a bruise on the right temple. Basilio had been picturing the ball of a gonne for some reason. Multiple sword wounds. But a blow to the head? Alejo El Toreador would have dodged a clubbing, no?

  But his injuries made him a sitting target, Basilio figured. He shut his eyes in bitterness and guilt. Shook his head. I never should have left him last night.

  Don Porfirio’s mansion was dark when Basilio had returned early this morning, and the doors were all locked. A great crowd had formed at the little chapel, with many townsfolk, pilgrims, knights, and gitanos wanting to see for themselves that Alejo the famous swordsman was dead.

  A gitano girl with a musical voice turned to Basilio. “You knew the bullfighter, mother?”

  Basilio nodded once, keeping his head down.

  “You come and say good-bye,” she said, taking Basilio gently by the elbow. “I’ll help. Step aside for her. She wants to see the bullfighter.”

  He allowed the girl to bring him closer to the body. The three fathers of these families could see his face now, and he looked them each in the eye. They did not suspect a thing, bowing their heads to the old woman in respect.

  Basilio stepped close to Alejo’s body and said to them in a whisper, “My friends, my friends. I need your help.”

  One of the patriarchs smiled wryly and quickly covered his mouth. “Good gracious, that’s a man.”

  “Did you know Alejo?” Basilio whispered.

  “We all knew the stories, of course,” the old patriarch said. “I had to come and pay my respects.”