The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  He nodded. “I think you’ll find Nicomedes already has this on his plate—as it were.” He nodded. “Fish are hard to come by until the Albin runs down to the salt. There’s plenty of them there, but no one to fish for them, I think, except farm boys skipping out on work.”

  They rode east, towards the river, while the column rolled west.

  “It may be that we’ll all fast, on Friday,” he said.

  “Even you?” she asked. The river was getting louder as they climbed towards the height of the stony ridge.

  “I am coming to terms with some of my views on God,” he said. “New evidence has presented itself.”

  “You’re going to let God off the hook, are you?” she asked, and even she was surprised at the acid tone she used.

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  Then the wall of sound cut off any possibility of conversation.

  Almost immediately, the trail went to the right, and down, winding and winding.

  Very quickly, Amicia was reminded of how important sound was to balance and perception. The white noise of the water—out of sight, but obliterating all other sound—made her feel almost blind.

  After some time, Gabriel dismounted and helped her dismount—without any display. Then he led his horse down the trail, which was narrower and softer, so that their horses and even their boots left tracks. A mist hung over the trees.

  They seemed to walk in a world of their own. They didn’t attempt to communicate, except that once he intruded into her memory palace to say, “It is very soft here—be careful,” and she smiled and thanked him.

  And then they emerged from the trees onto a broad, flat greensward. There were whole trees on the grass, washed up to show that at the full peak of the spring flood, the grass was awash. Nor was it a perfect lawn—legions of ducks and geese had ensured the future fertility of the spot.

  The noise was still incredible.

  He walked to the water’s edge. A broad pool, the size of a small lake, rolled away into the fast flow of the river beyond. The banks were green, the water ice-cold and ocean deep. Out in the middle of the pool, a trout rose, red and gold and silver, the size of a big cat, took a fly neatly and rolled back under the cold black water.

  But the pool didn’t hold the gaze. The falls were the miracle. The falls fell three hundred feet from the bluff far above where they had camped. They fell in a single broad sheet, separated high above them by a spire that stuck straight up into the air like the tower of a small cathedral.

  Her eye could not stop tracking the water as it fell and fell and fell—the pool devoured it and sent it away down the river.

  Amicia fell to her knees and prayed. She prayed for herself, and for him, and for the place and to bless God for all of creation.

  When she rose—her knees thoroughly damp—he had tied the horses. He beckoned to her, and she followed him willingly enough. She felt at ease. Confident. Happy.

  He led her to the edge of the falls, so that the enormous rush of water was passing a hand-span from his face.

  Then he stepped into the water.

  Amicia had seen a waterfall before, if not one so mighty as this. She stepped into the waterfall, too. In fact, she was merely damp when she emerged into the cave behind the fall.

  The cave was not silent, but the sound was merely noise here.

  He was grinning. “You do trust me.”

  She shrugged. “I might say that I trust in God, and provoke you,” she said. “But in truth, yes, my dear, I do trust you.”

  “Well, I thank you for your trust. I wanted you to come here.” He shrugged. “I found it years ago. I always imagined bringing my lady love here.”

  She laughed. “Sadly—perhaps sadly for us both—I am a nun, and not your lady love.”

  He nodded. He fetched a stool—there were several. “I can build a fire to get you dry,” he said.

  She shrugged. “I’ll get wet again going out,” she said. “Nor would it be useful for me to strip for you.”

  “This place is very special,” he said. He ignored her last comment. “Can you feel it, oh puissant Sister?”

  She reached out into the aethereal.

  She put her hand to her mouth.

  “It is closed off. The earth on one side and the rush of flowing water on the other.” He nodded. “I imagine something very powerful could make it in, or out, but this cave is virtually sealed in the aethereal.” He sat on a stool and leaned back. “So here we can talk. About anything. No one is listening—not Harmodius, not Thorn, and not even Ash.”

  The name reverberated.

  “Ash?” she asked.

  “After Lissen Carak, I went and made an ally—I think—of a potent and ancient Power that men call the Wyrm of Ercch.” He glanced at her and she nodded.

  “I have learned a great deal talking to him. Mostly, I have learned that he opposes another Power, who he calls Ash, and who—” Gabriel smiled like a boy. “I know I sound like a fool, but who seems to be the Power moving the pieces on the chessboard—at Lissen Carak, and in Harndon. And perhaps elsewhere.”

  This was not the conversation for which she had prepared for the last hour while walking and riding and climbing. She took a deep breath.

  “What do you guard, under the vaults and dungeons of Lissen Carak?” he asked her.

  “That is not my secret,” she said.

  He nodded. “But you admit there is a secret there,” he said. “What have you done that I cannot be killed?” he asked. “Even for you, this is a potent witchery.”

  She sat back on her stool. Leaned her head into the stone of the back wall, slanting upwards into the white blur of the water that made the front wall.

  “Don’t you think we’d be better with blatant seduction?” she asked.

  He laughed. His laugh—the open honesty of it—made her laugh.

  “Amicia, is your love of God so great, the feeling so wonderful, that you have no room in you for earthly love?” he asked.

  She made a face. “What would you have me say? But yes.” She shook her head. “I think there was a time—not so long ago—when I’d have fallen into your arms.” She flushed. “But something has changed in me. There is a point, in prayer—in the ascent to God—when you must guard yourself carefully against sin. And then, I’m sorry, a point where sin seems a little foolish. When it no longer tempts. Where earthly love is but a pale companion.”

  “Ouch,” he said. He wore a brave smile, but she saw she’d cut him too deeply.

  “Oh, my dear—I only want everyone to be happy,” she said.

  He nodded. “What would you say if I said that’s how I feel for you?”

  She made the face again. “I’d say that you are twenty-three or -four and you’ll feel differently in a year or two.” She held up a hand. “I’d say that your preoccupation with war makes it impossible for you to love me—or God—very deeply.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I’d tell a squire with a new girl the same.” He crossed his booted legs. “So—to hell with love. What did you do?”

  She looked at him. So close. So much himself. So many things about him she hated. And loved. Not always as easy to let it go as she claimed, even now, when she could feel the—the simple reality of God’s creation as firmly as she could feel the rock under her hip.

  “I used…” She paused. She had a great deal to lose. And at another level, there were parts of this she had carefully avoided admitting, even to herself. “The Abbess was dead. The fortress almost fell. I had all that power Thorn released. I was failing—oh, Gabriel, how I was failing. The potentia was too much for me. The King—and the Queen—required healing.”

  She closed her eyes. “And then God put a hand on me and steadied me. And the potentia turned steadily to ops. And I cast and cast.” She stared at the falls, but in her eyes were the results of a hundred healings, of men and women broken by battle and remade.

  “I healed everything I touched,” she said. She still wondered at the thought.


  Gabriel nodded but said nothing.

  She turned to him. “Whoever—steadied me. Spoke to me.” She took a deep breath. “Then and later—but not since, which troubles Miriam. And me.” She pursed her lips a moment and frowned. “Then—the night I was going to… I might have—” She paused.

  “I don’t want to do this,” she said. “I’m sorry, Gabriel. I don’t want to explain. I made a decision. Just as you do. The kind of decision that you make in battle—irrevocable, and binding. It is made. I have never hidden what I feel for you.” She looked him in the eye. “But I will not act on it.” She nodded crisply. “Ever.”

  “But—” he began.

  She got up. “Don’t ask. You love me? Don’t ask. If you sent Michael to his death to save your company—would you?”

  He pursed his lips. Had he known, for a moment his expression was the twin of what hers had been. “You’re not an easy friend. Yes, I can see myself doing it.”

  She nodded. “Let’s say it worked. Michael dead, the company saved. How often would you care to revisit that decision?”

  He rose, too. “I think—I think I understand.” He shook his head. “Oh, Amicia.”

  Impulsively, she put a hand behind his head and kissed him—quickly, on the lips, the way she might kiss Katherine or Father Arnaud. “I will teach your children,” she said. “I just won’t bear them.”

  He stood for a moment, as if stunned. Then he knelt at her feet, and kissed one of her hands.

  From his knees, he smiled. “Am I really unkillable?” he asked.

  She grinned. Breath flowed out of her, and her shoulders relaxed.

  “Don’t press your luck,” she said.

  After that, they spoke for almost an hour—easily, talking. Mostly, he told her what he had learned in Liviapolis, and from the Wyrm. She was reticent about the secrets of Lissen Carak, but she grunted at some of his theories.

  “What did Father Arnaud think of your Wyrm?” she asked, when it was clearly time for them to go.

  “The Wyrm restored his powers to heal,” Gabriel said.

  Instead of responding, she went and put a hand into the waterfall. She drank—the water chilled her hand almost instantly.

  “Before we go back to the world,” she said. “Tell me why you are coming to peace with God.”

  “Is this confession?” he asked. “Bless me, Mother, for it is roughly ten years since my last confession. Shall I start with the murders or the lechery?”

  “Blasphemy comes so easily to you,” she said.

  “My mother has always seen herself as God’s peer.” He shrugged.

  “I like your mother,” Amicia said. “I think you need to stop hiding from her, and behind her. We all have mothers.” She took his hands. “God?”

  He nodded. “Oh, I think I have allowed myself to fall into the same trap that every highly-strung boy and girl since Adam and Eve has fallen into. That I was specially cursed by God.”

  “Rotten theology,” she said.

  “Mmm.” His non-committal grunt was almost lost in the water sounds. “I’m not yet entirely convinced. And then, instead of miraculous conversion, my dear Sister, you will find me merely a tiresome agnostic. Asking all the usual questions—why so there so much suffering? Why is the world run by a handful of malicious super-entities with special powers? Where is the proof of God’s love?” He looked down at her hands. “I confess that when you hold my hands, I have a frisson of belief in God’s love.”

  “Is there a better line of patter in all the spheres?” she said, eyes wide. “Love me, and I’ll come to God?”

  They laughed together. It was a good laugh.

  “You will find another,” she said.

  “Never,” he said.

  “Yes, love. Now be easy.” She reached out to touch him, and felt a frisson of power—merely an echo of power. But she knew the taste, and she smiled, because Ghause had put a love-spell on her, and it made her laugh. “Like to like,” she murmured.

  “What’s that?” Gabriel said.

  “Thanks,” Amicia said. “This was—beautiful.”

  Gabriel bowed. “We should go back.”

  Two hours later, they re-joined the column south of the bluffs, and crossed Sixth Bridge at its head. Perhaps there were ribald comments, but Sister Amicia’s demeanour laughed them to scorn. She rode with the captain, and her sisters, too, and by the time the column halted for a midday meal, their light-heartedness had spread down the column.

  After lunch, Bad Tom joined them. The herds were now almost a full day behind. But he rode with Ser Gabriel and the nuns and Chris Foliak and Francis Atcourt, exchanged loud gests with Ser Danved, tried and failed to provoke Ser Bertran. They hawked for an hour, and secured some partridges for dinner, and they met Ser Gavin, who’d taken the advance guard well down the road.

  While the two brothers were talking a bird appeared above them, and every hermetical practitioner in the column looked up, all together.

  Ser Alcaeus, in the rear with the Moreans, spurred up the column in time to join the captain as he retrieved the enormous bird, an imperial messenger. He took the bird, smoothed its feathers and gentled it, and then deftly slipped off the two message tubes.

  “Encrypted,” he said. He handed them to the captain.

  “How far to camp?” Ser Gabriel asked his brother.

  Ser Gavin—a new man since seeing his affianced lady at Lissen Carak—pointed ahead. “Two leagues. Next ridge, and just beyond.”

  The captain pushed the two tubes up under his chin and looked at Ser Alcaeus. “If I stop here to read them,” he said, “we won’t have any supper.”

  Alcaeus made a moue. “It’s Lent,” he said. “Supper will be too dull for words.”

  Chris Foliak leaned over. “It’s almost never Lent at my table,” he said—but when he caught Amicia’s eye, he had the good grace to look away.

  The imperial messenger was the end of their day of Maying, as Amicia thought of it. They rode faster and with purpose—so fast that she dropped back with her sisters, afraid that Mary would have a mishap. So she missed the captain’s arrival. But when she rode into the camp—with most of the tents already up, and no one behind her but the Moreans—she found Nell laying out their bedding.

  “Many thanks, Nell!” she said. The beautiful day had dried the blankets, even on the rump of her horse, and she looked forward to sleep—dry sleep.

  “Captain says for you to come when it’s convenient,” Nell said. “Which means as soon as you can, Sister.”

  She entered the red pavilion to the sound of silence. Ser Gavin was there, and Ser Michael, and Ser Thomas and Ser Christos, and Ser Alcaeus stood by the captain. He was writing on wax. Cully sat with his legs crossed, drinking wine.

  Everyone looked serious. And they all looked at her—her heart missed a beat. They looked at her as if someone had died.

  “What?” she asked.

  Gabriel—she couldn’t think of him as the captain, today—rose and came over to her.

  “The King,” he said gently. “The King has disestablished your order, with the consent of the archbishop. He has unmade the Order of Saint Thomas.”

  She sighed. “No king—not even the Patriarch—can unmake what God has made,” she said.

  Ser Michael rose. “On behalf of all the company, Sister,” he said. “You and the Prior, and Father Arnaud—you are all an example to us every day.”

  Ser Gabriel nodded. “I agree,” he said. “What will you do?”

  “Have a cup of wine,” Amicia said, sitting. She couldn’t bring herself to laugh. “I need to think.”

  “You are welcome in our council, Sister,” Ser Michael said, reminding her that she was, in fact, intruding on a council of war. It was obvious from the two maps on the table and the wax tablets at every hand.

  “That can’t have been the only news,” Amicia said.

  Ser Alcaeus looked as if he might protest, but Ser Gabriel smiled at her—a warmth to his smile which she bathed
in for a moment. A guilty pleasure. “No. The Queen’s trial is set for Tuesday next week—at the tournament. There’s a long list of attainders, forfeitures and treasons.”

  “My father is to be executed,” Ser Michael said with chilling equanimity.

  “Half the nobility is to be taken and executed,” Gabriel said. “Apparently by the other half, and a handful of Galles.”

  “Scarce a handful,” Ser Thomas said. “Three hundred lances with that monster, Du Corse.”

  Ser Michael laughed. “Seldom is a man so aptly named.”

  “There’s open faction and war in Harndon,” Gabriel said. “The commons against the nobles, or so it appears. The King has managed to attaint Ser Gerald Random.”

  “The richest and the most loyal man in the kingdom,” muttered Ser Gavin.

  “There’s refugees fleeing the city, the King is considering martial law, and it would appear that the Archbishop of Lorica is the prime mover of all this.” Gabriel flung a small, almost transparent piece of parchment on the table.

  Ser Michael frowned. “It’s as if he wants civil war.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Someone wants civil war. Someone very clever.”

  Michael shook his head. “Send for the company.”

  Gabriel shook his head in turn. “Why? We’re not under attack. Listen, my friends—we have a licence to ride armed to a tournament. We’re going to the tournament, and we are within the law.”

  Suddenly, Amicia saw it. “You’re going to fight for the Queen!” she said.

  Ser Michael’s head snapped around, and so did Ser Gavin’s.

  Gabriel had the look of insufferable triumphant pleasure that he wore when one of his little schemes went well. His lips pursed and his cheeks were stretched and he looked like a cat who had caught a mouse.

  “I am, too,” he said.

  “May we all live to get you there,” Ser Michael said. “You bastard. I want to fight for the Queen!”

  Gabriel shook his head. “You’re going to rescue your father. And some other people.”

  Bad Tom rubbed his hairy chin. “We’re going to cut our way in and out?” he said with evident pleasure.

  The Red Knight sighed. “No, Tom. No, we’re going to make every effort to be reasonable, responsible knights who do not want to inflict public violence on people already at the verge of civil war.”