Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02]

by The Crystal Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  Dylan nodded, and favored the King with a pungent description of the event. They gossiped for a few minutes about it, cheerfully assassinating the characters of the Flemings.

  Then Louis became serious again. “I will set my councillors to drafting a treaty along the lines you have proposed. They will think me mad, but they do already. Perhaps history will remember me as Louis the Peacemaker. I would like that very much.”

  Dylan always remembered the next two weeks in a nightmare haze of blood and screams and the constant smell of funeral pyres. He was given a troop of foot soldiers, doughty, serious men who wore a cross and fleur-de-lys upon their tunics, and a doleful priest who shrived them three times a day. It was a horrible, house-to-house business, an examination of every citizen—noble and peasant—and the swift execution of hundreds. Many fled, of course, but Louis’ other troops caught most.

  At evening they would return to their barracks, filthy and stinking, to drink vast quantities of wine, and weep for what they had done before they slept and dreamt it all again. Even the priest broke down after a few days.

  The greatest difficulty was with the denizens of Paris itself, many of whom were not above a little expedient murder for personal gain, and Dylan found himself sending men and women to the same dungeons he had occupied so recently. Later, when the dungeons were full to bursting, he had the loathsome task of executing a few and tossing them on the pyres with their victims. There was barely a stick of wood left unbumt in the whole city, though the wagons creaked out of the gates each new, smutty dawn to gather more, and the Seine was almost black with falling ash. For two days there was no bread to be had, due to the shortage of wood, and the barracks were miserable and damp.

  Somehow it stopped, and the city seemed to hold its breath. Indeed it was breathless, for the air was heavy and still except for the curling spires of the guttering pyres. The bells began, calling the faithful to worship, but Dylan was sick of God and everything else. He crawled off to his cot and slept like a dead man.

  Later, he dreamt, first of twisted faces screaming as they died, then of a strange darkness filled with the sound of tinkling bells.

  The darkness parted. She sat upon the edge of a huge bed formed like a golden swan, hands in her lap, weeping.

  Her golden hair was unbound and fell upon her sweet breasts like summer straw.

  Dylan snapped awake. He had not thought of her for days. Why was she crying? He sat up and tugged at his

  beard.

  “Chevalier?” It was the scrawny boy who ran errands for the troop.

  "Oui.”

  “The King wishes to see you.”

  “Very well.”

  Dylan did not hurry. He washed up, put on clean clothing, and dragged a comb through his hair and beard before he let the boy take him to Louis. The King was in the same small audience room they had met in before, and it smelled of ash and incense and the rotting summer Seine. It was hot though the sun was almost down, hot and stifling.

  Louis looked as if he had not slept in weeks. He was thinner, and he had dark circles under his eyes. One cheek twitched constantly, and his elegant hands trembled on his

  beads.

  “Your Majesty,” Dylan said, bowing.

  “Merde,” Louis replied bluntly. “You look terrible.”

  “So do you, my lord.”

  “Sit! It is done, and well done, but what a cost. God’s work is never easy, but this! And I must carry this out across the whole of Franconia. No victory was ever so joyless. My heart wishes to break in sorrow.”

  “I think mine has.” Dylan was almost in the grip of one of his dark moods, and he thought that the cleansing of Paris was no victory but somehow a wretched defeat. He was no better than a murderer, no matter what Louis said of doing God’s work. The cross on his brow, the symbol traced there a fortnight ago by this well-intentioned servant of the Almighty, ached, and the stag in him bristled with an impatience to be free of the smells and sounds of men. When I have reclaimed this sword for my goddesses, I shall find a quiet place, perhaps by the sea, and be alone. I shall never return to this city. It is not that I hate men, but I cannot pretend that I like them.

  A boom like a giant clearing his throat rumbled through the air. The tapestries rustled and the very stones of the Louvre seemed to tremble. Dylan had a momentary thought that his serpentine grandmother was shifting her body before he realized that it was thunder. The heavens opened up and he could hear rain pounding down into the nearby courtyard. They listened in silence for a while, and Dylan could distinguish the steady spouting of a gargoyle from the rumble of thunder and the beat of raindrops. A wind ripped through the narrow windows, bringing a clean smell with it. Dylan wished he could go stand in it to wash away the memory of the horror.

  Louis placed an object on the table. It was not quite two cubits long and wrapped in a piece of cloth of gold that had seen better days. Louis flicked the fabric aside. “I believe you were looking for this.”

  Dylan stared at the scabbard. The colors of the interlace pattern were green and blue upon a silvery ground, and there were gems at each intersection. It was an odd shape, broader than any sword he had ever seen and tapering at the point. He reached out and took it in his hands, turning it over. The gems were amber and beryl, and how they were attached he could not tell. The leather seemed almost alive under his touch, as if it remembered its former existence.

  “Where?”

  “It has been in the treasury forever. No one knows its provenance—except you, I suppose—and it has taken my clerks days to find it. Is it the one you sought?”

  “I believe so. Thank you.” Had Louis known he possessed it when they first met? Probably. It did not matter. This was his thirty pieces of silver for being a slayer of men, and he hated it and wanted to toss it into the Seine. The river would carry it down to the sea, to the Ocean

  Mother, and dolphins would play with it. He wished he could crawl into the grey-green bosom of the Mother of Waters, or change into some sleek sea beast and forget that he had ever had a hand to hold a sword in. He had no faith in the goodness of God, and his goddesses were jades and whores. There was everything in the world but hope.

  “It is little enough reward for your valiant efforts, and, in truth, I am glad to be rid of it. It is magical, but it is not the sort of magic I care for. It is too old, too . . . primitive, and it makes me feel stupid.” He paused and cleared his throat. His cheek twitched horribly and his eyes glittered with fatigue.

  Louis mastered himself with an effort. “I have sought this Pers Morel, but he seems to have vanished into the earth. His house is empty.” The King’s shoulders sagged.

  “Is it? I wonder . . . Louis, do you count me as your friend?”

  “I do. ’Tis strange, for Kings do not have friends as a rule. Or rather, they ought not, for there is a danger that they will apply their influence upon a monarch. And, too, 1 have always had God.” He sounded almost doubtful. “But your mother has been a true friend to Arthur, by all reports, and you seem very much her child. There is ... a simplicity about you. You are no flatterer, and you wish no more than to do your job. I know how you have labored for me, and I even guess what it has cost you. And we are less alike than bete and bette." He chuckled over his clumsy pun, as if the making of a jest was a newfound game. “God knows my councillors seem to think I am no better than a beet, and you see more the inarticulate beast in yourself than the honest man. That, you know, is the great mystery—that the good do not see their goodness, and the wicked believe themselves virtuous. Still, it is no bad thing to be a humble beet of a King, to grow in sweet earth and feed my beloved Franconia with my flesh.”

  Dylan was acutely embarrassed by these reflections. “If I am your friend, let me ease your suffering a little.”

  Dylan reached into his pouch and removed one of Beth’s leaves, and put it on the table.

  Louis eyed it uneasily. “God will heal me,”

  “God is very far away, and I am here. Y
ou have put his mark upon me unbidden. I would return the favor.”

  “I do not like it.”

  “It is only a birch leaf, and the birch drives out evil spirits. Surely your faith is strong enough to—”

  The wind gusted through the windows and caught the leaf up. It fluttered through the air and landed on the King’s brow. For a moment his features twisted as if he was in pain. Then he relaxed and a beatific smile crossed his face. He stared at something—or nothing.

  “Are you certain she is not the Virgin?” he asked, as the leaf fell back onto the tabletop.

  “Well, she is a virgin, as far as I know.”

  Louis laughed. “I shall miss you more than I can say, and I regret our paths must part. I would wish you Godspeed, but . .

  “I know.” Dylan picked up the leaf and put it back in his pouch, and left the King of Franconia to his meditations. He paused awhile in the courtyard and let the rain soak him to the skin. Then he went to gather his belongings and to find out why the dream woman wept.

  XIV

  Dylan sat tailor-fashion on his cot in the barracks and listened to the roar of the storm. Several men-at-arms were dicing a few feet away, winning and losing imaginary fortunes and great estates. The rattle of the dice and the sounds of their voices was soothing and ordinary after the horrors they had endured. He looked at the scabbard which lay across his knees, seeking in its pattern some clue to his next move. No immediate inspiration arrived, and he wrapped it up and stowed it in his pack. He wished the storm would wear itself out, so he could depart the city.

  Slipping into a reverie of silent forests, Dylan suddenly remembered the odd murals in the House of the Bleeding Dragon. Pers Morel had been puzzled that he noticed them. Why? he wondered. They were so lifelike that they must occasion comment from any visitor. Unless they were not visible to all and sundry.

  Dylan stretched out on his cot and folded his hands behind his head and tried to visualize the murals. He had not studied them carefully, but he found that with concentration he could draw them up from the well of memory. The trees were smooth boled and almost shiny, and the branches were feathery, like great ferns. On one wall—the left, he thought—there was a low hill with a cave mouth almost hidden by curling vegetation. He sat up and the cot creaked ominously under the shift of his weight. One of the men looked at him curiously.

  The wind outside dropped, and the rain began to slacken as the boom of thunder faded in the distance. The storm was breaking, and Dylan was impatient to be on his way. He wondered if the King of the Rooks was anywhere around, for Paris was still a maze of incomprehensibility to him.

  Instead, he gestured to the man who was still watching him. “Do you know the House of the Bleeding Dragon?”

  “Of course, sieur. My sister lives in that quarter and I have passed the place many times.” He paused, reflectively. “It is a house with a bad name, chevalier, and an excess of cats.”

  “Will you show me there?”

  “Why, monsieur?” He looked at Dylan’s face, shrugged with Gallic fatalism, and nodded. “As you wish.” He clearly thought Dylan was a little eccentric.

  Dawn was breaking as they left the barracks, and the nearby Seine was quite audible, swollen with rain. The air smelled sweet, but an army of midges rose off the river and flung themselves at Dylan and his companion. It was warm and damp, and the center of many streets was clogged with sodden ash. Bits of unbumt bone and small trinkets from the bodies of the dead gleamed in the blackened sludge, and the two men kept to the sides of the streets to avoid the mess. It would need more than one storm to wash Paris clean.

  Still, the city looked better to Dylan than it had when he had first seen it. A door opened and the smell of bread wafted out. A baby wailed and an urchin darted out and plucked some small ornament from the wet ashes, apparently unmoved by the recent horror. Some couple raised their voices in argument, the patois so thick that Dylan had trouble following it, though it seemed a woman named Alais was at the center of the controversy. He smiled, and so did his companion.

  “Everything is love or money, is it not, monsieur?” Dylan nodded. “I am sure you are right, Jean-Jacques. It is good to see that things are back to normal. The horror is over.”

  “Oui et non. We Parisians are strong and we respond well to adversity. Even so, we will be a long time forgetting the fires; a long time mourning. And our troop will go with le bon roi to other cities, to destroy the Shadow. Will you be with us?”

  “No. Our ways part now. I have finished my part.” “But, are you not the King’s good friend?”

  “Perhaps. He saved my life. I do not know if that is a debt which can be repaid. Still, I came to Paris to find something, and, having found it, I must go on.”

  “The men like you, even though you are a foreigner. You have been a good captain.”

  “Thank you.” Dylan had a moment’s hesitation. Should he give up his foolish quest and help Louis drive the Shadow out of Franconia? All the killing had sickened him, but was it not his sworn duty as a knight? It was, but Louis had released him by giving him the scabbard. Probably with some feeling of relief, Dylan decided, for they would always be uneasy together. They saw too much of each other’s souls, and saw each mirrored in the other. Louis was a man of God and cities, and Dylan faced towards the forests and the goddess, two sides of a coin. Dylan knew he would never really be content in the world of cities, that he was too wild, too like his father for keeps and castles.

  “The King will do very nicely without my further help, I think.”

  “So you say, sieur. Of course, you are not Franconian.” Jean-Jacques made it sound like that was a great mistake on Dylan’s part.

  They came into the street that led to Pers Morel’s house, and found the great door closed. Dylan pushed it open and a musty smell of still air and many cats puffed into their faces. The entry hall was as he remembered it.

  “Tell me, what do you see in this room, Jean-Jacques?” “Sieur? I see a bench, a stone floor, reeds, a ceiling, wooden beams, and walls. It is a most ordinary room.” “Do you see anything on the walls?”

  He peered at them. “Plaster and whitewash, monsieur. A good job. My cousin does such work. It is more difficult than one might think to get the surface smooth. I tried to help him on a job once, but I was hopeless. Le bon Dieu did not make me a craftsman.”

  Dylan coiled a curl of beard around a large finger thoughtfully. The strange trees were quite obvious to him. The leaves seemed to stir in a breeze that did not exist. There was a sort of path that wound through them towards the cave opening. He turned slowly, seeking the beginning of the path.

  It took him several tries, for the light of the paintings dazzled his eyes slightly. Jean-Jacques watched him curiously. Finally Dylan saw that at one point the path seemed to touch the stones in the floor. It was on the wall opposite the cave opening, and he walked over to it and studied the point where wall met floor. He touched his toe to it tentatively, and felt a warm tingling.

  Dylan shifted his pack and bit his lip thoughtfully. He had the scabbard, but he wasn’t sure if the way before him was the right way. He wished he had a clearer idea of what he was about, that he had at least such cryptic instructions as his mother had received from Bridget. He thought of Beth and heard her soft laughter.

  Go, she whispered softly.

  Dylan turned and looked at the man-at-arms. Jean-Jacques returned his regard with open puzzlement. "Au revoir, mon ami,” he said, and stepped into the wall. There was a slight sense of resistance, like moving in treacle, and he heard a startled “Mon dieu' behind him. Then he was in a sweet-scented forest.

  Dylan walked several steps forward, then stopped and looked around. The trees around him were ordinary trees, poplars and maples and pine trees. He saw nothing that even remotely resembled the ferny trees on the walls of Morel’s house. A rabbit bounded across his path but did not pause.

  He moved forward slowly, and as he set his left foot down he felt subtly twiste
d. Dylan moved to the right and the sensation vanished. There was a path here, but not one he could see, he decided. Dylan took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and groped his way forward, one arm held before him. It was exhausting, and he was sweating after a short time. He paused, wiped his brow on his sleeve, and kept on.

  His outstretched hand met a smooth, warm flank. Dylan opened his eyes and found a licome in front of him. A faint scar glistened on the left shoulder, and he was fairly certain it was the same beast he had ridden league upon league across Franconia a few weeks before. It seemed a lifetime ago, but he was glad to see his friend once again. Dylan stroked the soft nose and smooth neck. The licome snorted and tossed its head.

  “Hello, old fellow.” The licome stamped a hoof in reply and edged Dylan towards a low rock. Taking this as a command, Dylan mounted his steed. It was as awkward and uncomfortable a seat as he remembered, encumbered with sword and impedimenta, but it was easier than moving by feel with his eyes closed. The licome trumpeted and bounded through the trees. Dylan clung to its neck and tried to ignore his discomfort.

  The Queen’s court was silent. The courtiers and spell singers moved soundlessly around the great chamber, their bells muffled, for the Queen was dying. Two web weavers, their long faces pale, stood on either side of the throne, trying to sustain her. They were haggard with the effort, aware of the sullen glances of their fellows. Let her go, the eyes said. The web weavers ignored them and continued in their sworn duties.

  Elpha stirred, her light flickering like an aurora. She lifted her proud head and raised her arms with a great effort. The White Folk froze in their movements.

  A ragged sound, a dreadful wheezing, came from her mouth. Elpha’s lips were cracked and dry, and blood oozed from the cracks and spotted the pleatings on her bosom. The White Folk shuddered at the sound of her, hearing the faint parody of her song of power in the terrible noises. She had been a long time dying, and they hated her, both for being the cause of her own passing and for reminding them of their own mortality.