Storm Riders

by Margaret Weis

  A month had passed since the Bottom Dwellers had attacked the Rosian port city of Westfirth. Since the attack, Sir Ander Martel, Knight Protector, had been dividing his time between sitting at the bedside of his charge, Father Jacob Northrop, and crawling through the rubble searching for the body of their companion, Brother Barnaby. Father Jacob had been grievously wounded in the attack, but Brother Barnaby had suffered a worse fate, caught in the explosion that had blown up the Old Fort’s gun emplacements.

  The weeks since the attack had not brought the knight much comfort.

  Father Jacob had suffered a severe blow to the head. The injury was so serious that for days his life was in peril. The archbishop had sent to the Arcanum for healers, who had treated the priest around the clock, using prayers and healing magicks and even going so far as to perform a procedure known as trepanation, in which a healer skilled in the technique drilled a hole in Father Jacob’s skull.

  Sir Ander had been appalled by the idea and had argued against it, but the surgeon, Sister Elizabeth, had said that if they did not relieve the pressure on the priest’s brain, he would die. Sir Ander had gone to the small chapel in the Old Fort, the residence of the archbishop of Westfirth, where they were staying as his guests. There, he prayed for Father Jacob and for the soul of Brother Barnaby, lighting candles at the altar for them both.

  “How could You let this happen to these two good men?” Sir Ander asked God in sorrow and anger.

  God answered in a voice that sounded very much like the voice of Father Jacob.

  The situation is too complicated. You could never possibly understand, the priest would often say to Sir Ander impatiently. You simply have to trust me.

  Sir Ander did trust in God. The knight had undergone a crisis of faith many years earlier when his best friend, Julian de Guichen, was executed for treason. Since that time, Sir Ander’s faith in God had been steadfast and unwavering, but not blind. He was not above arguing his case with both Father Jacob and God. Sir Ander doubted his arguments altered the opinion of either, but he always felt better afterward.

  A week after the surgery, Father Jacob had regained consciousness. Sir Ander was jubilant, at first. His joy did not last, though, for Father Jacob did not recognize his friend and protector. The priest’s speech was lucid, but he spoke to only one person—Marie Allemand, the founder of the Arcanum, known as “Saint Marie.” She had been dead for four hundred years.

  Sir Ander had fallen into a melancholy routine. He spent the nights on a camp bed in Father Jacob’s room, either listening to Father Jacob’s snoring or his metaphysical conversations with a dead saint. In the mornings, Sir Ander would rise, eat his own breakfast, and then sit with Father Jacob as his friend ate his own. The priest was in good spirits. He ate well and had put on the weight he’d lost during his coma. But, Sir Ander knew, while his body might be healthy, his mind was not.

  Before he was wounded, Father Jacob was considered one of the most brilliant, if difficult, members of the Arcanum. A savant, he was known for his ability to puzzle out solutions to the most baffling mysteries. Now he sat eating rashers of bacon and arguing with Saint Marie over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

  Finding the sight of the ruin of this great mind terribly depressing, Sir Ander would leave for a breath of fresh air, walking along what was left of the battlements of the Old Fort, observing the rebuilding efforts or searching yet again amidst the rubble for some sign of Brother Barnaby. His fruitless efforts to find the monk were more depressing still.

  Sir Ander would return to Father Jacob in the afternoons and talk to the priest, keeping him abreast of events. Sister Elizabeth had said that such conversations might help Father Jacob return to himself, but since Father Jacob was carrying on his own conversation with the saint, Sir Ander had his doubts. He persevered, however.

  This morning, over a month since the attack on the city, Sir Ander told Father Jacob the news that had everyone in Westfirth talking.

  “King Alaric is going to honor us with his presence,” said Sir Ander drily. “His Majesty and his entourage are sailing here on the royal yacht. They will arrive in Westfirth tomorrow. The king is going to tour the site of the battle destruction and to hold a ceremony for those who died aboard the Royal Lion.”

  Father Jacob, his head still swathed in bandages, was sitting up in bed. He wore his nightclothes and a dressing gown over them. The priest was not looking at Sir Ander, nor was he listening to him. He was speaking to an empty chair. As was customary with the secretive Arcanum, one of their healers sat near the priest, listening to his conversation with the dead saint.

  The Arcanum healers were always in attendance. At first, when Father Jacob was hovering between life and death, Sir Ander had been grateful for their presence. Now, even though the healers had admitted they were unable to do anything for the priest, they were still here, taking note of everything Father Jacob said. Sir Ander guessed that they were afraid the priest might reveal secrets best left to God and the Arcanum.

  “But certainly it may be argued, Sister Marie,” Father Jacob was saying, “that, as the great philosopher wrote and I quote, ‘Although the senses occasionally mislead us respecting minute objects, and as such are so far removed from us as to be beyond the reach of close observation, there are yet many other of their informations, of the truth of which it is manifestly impossible to doubt.’”

  Sir Ander sighed and went back to reading the local gazette’s report on the efforts to repair the guard towers. He was interrupted by a knock on the door. Sir Ander rose to answer it, thinking dourly that it must be more healers.

  Sir Ander had requested that two guards from the Old Fort’s Guard Core stand watch outside the priest’s room. Father Jacob had been ambushed in Westfirth only a day before the attack on the city and Sir Ander feared that the person who had missed killing him the first time might try again.

  “I have a message for you, Sir Ander,” said the guard, saluting. “The archbishop requests your presence. You’ll find him in his office.”

  “When?” Sir Ander asked, frowning. He did not like the archbishop.

  “Now, my lord,” said the guard. “Sister Elizabeth is here to examine Father Jacob.”

  Sister Elizabeth was a brisk, no-nonsense woman who had defied convention to become one of the first women to study medicine. She was the surgeon who performed the trepanation on Father Jacob and was credited with saving the priest’s life. Short and compact with strong, capable hands, Sister Elizabeth was invariably cheerful, active, and intelligent. The severe folds of the wimple oddly complemented her plump face and her bright, dimpled smile.

  “And how are we today?” she asked, whisking past Sir Ander to attend Father Jacob. “Have we been eating?”

  “Like a wyvern after a three-day run,” said Sir Ander.

  He was immediately sorry he had made the reference to wyverns, for it reminded him of Brother Barnaby. The monk had been their pilot for the yacht and he had always harbored a fondness for the recalcitrant and ill-tempered beasts.

  “Excellent,” said Sister Elizabeth, placing her hand on Father Jacob’s neck to take the priest’s pulse. She glanced at the other healer, who had risen from his chair. “You are relieved of your duty, Brother Diego. I will stay with Father Jacob for a while. I want to observe him.”

  Brother Diego nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  “It’s been almost four weeks now, Sister,” said Sir Ander worriedly. “Shouldn’t there be some change by now?”

  “Of all the miracles of God’s creation, the brain is the most wondrous,” said Sister Elizabeth. “One never knows what will happen in such cases, but I remain hopeful.”

  “I’m glad someone does,” Sir Ander muttered. “If you will excuse me, Sister, I have been summoned to meet with the archbishop.”

  “Before you go, Sir Ander, I need to give you some instructions regarding Father Jacob.”

  “Yes, Sister,” Sir Ander said, somewhat
puzzled. “What is it?”

  Sister Elizabeth approached him and fixed him with an intense gaze. The dimples that appeared when she smiled had vanished. Her gaze was grave.

  “Tread warily, Sir Knight,” she said, her voice low.

  Startled, Sir Ander was about to ask what she meant, when she cast a warning glance at the door, reminding him that the members of Guard Core were standing outside and although the door might be closed, their ears were not.

  “Give a few drops of this concoction twice daily to Father Jacob,” Sister Elizabeth added in a more normal tone. “You can mix it in his tea. I will leave it here.”

  She placed a vial filled with a colorless liquid on the nightstand.

  “I will, Sister,” said Sir Ander, troubled. “Thank you.”

  He left Sister Elizabeth seated comfortably in a chair, listening to Father Jacob as he spoke to the invisible Saint Marie, and went to try to find the archbishop’s office.

  * * *

  The structure known throughout Westfirth as the Old Fort was both fortress and residence. Since the archbishop had taken up residence there, he had begun referring to the fort as the “archbishop’s palace.” No one in Westfirth knew it by that name, however, and would snicker at anyone who referred to it by that appellation.

  The fortress portion consisted of a stockade, gun emplacements, watchtowers, and docks for naval patrol boats and ships. The gun emplacements had been targeted by the Bottom Dwellers. A single blast from the green beam weapon mounted on the stern of their black ship had sent ten forty-two-pound cannons and four sixty-four-pound cannons sliding down the face of the cliff into the Breath, along with a guard tower and much of the ramparts.

  The palace, which was connected to the Old Fort by a series of labyrinthine hallways, had not been attacked and had sustained only minor damage from the shattering explosion—cracks in the plaster, glass windows blown out, a kitchen chimney toppled.

  Workmen summoned from all parts of Rosia were busy making repairs on the palace, the fort, the docks, and especially the archbishop’s beautiful new cathedral, which lay in ruins. The archbishop, Russell Lovaasen, of Guundaran descent, was a proud and ambitious man. He had promoted the building of a new cathedral in a city that was known for its wicked tendencies and rebellious nature, saying that the cathedral would bring Westfirth back to God and establish the church and her archbishop as a force in Rosia. The destruction of the cathedral had affected Lovaasen far more than the destruction of the fortress. The fact that the enemy had targeted the cathedral, when no other building in Westfirth had been attacked, was not lost on him.

  “This is evidence beyond doubt that those who did this were Freyans,” the archbishop stated at every opportunity. “All know the Freyans are godless heathens.”

  Those who held to the belief that the attackers were fiends sent by the Evil One to destroy mankind pointed to the destruction of the cathedral to prove their point. Their theory had been extremely popular in the days immediately following the assault, reinforced by wild tales told by survivors of demons who looked as though they had flown out of the cathedral’s murals depicting hell.

  The churches had been packed with people down on their knees begging God to save them. Everyone expected the Evil One, Aertheum, to come riding in on his black horse to burn the city to the ground. The archbishop had thundered from the pulpit that he was prepared to take on the devil himself.

  When days went by and no hellfire erupted from the sewers or rained down from heaven, people grew weary of going to church. A courier arrived from the grand bishop with a letter from His Majesty the king. Suddenly the fiends were not from hell, but a far worse place—Freya, home of Rosia’s most bitter enemies.

  Sir Ander knew the truth about the foe. They were not fiends, nor were they Freyans. Father Jacob had carefully examined a helmet worn by one of the invaders, and had revealed the results of his examination to Sir Ander and Brother Barnaby moments before the assault on Westfirth. The attackers were men who termed themselves the “Bottom Dwellers” because they lived at the bottom of the world, something that most people would have said was impossible. Sir Ander was not yet certain he quite believed it.

  Father Jacob had not told anyone else of his discovery. He had been planning to wait until he could return to the Arcanum to continue his investigations. Sir Ander had considered telling the archbishop what Father Jacob had found, but now that politics were involved, his information, regardless of its truth, would not be welcome.

  Sir Ander wondered why he was being summoned, and guessed that the meeting must be connected to the arrival of the king. Sir Ander was not one of the king’s favorites. He had been a friend to the rebel cause and although he had not joined the rebellion against the throne, he had been—and still was—in sympathy with the rebels.

  Arriving in the antechamber of the archbishop’s office, Sir Ander gave his name to the priest who served as the archbishop’s secretary. The priest said there might be a short wait. The archbishop had a visitor and there was another person also waiting for an audience. He indicated a monk who was standing by the window, gazing outside.

  Sir Ander wandered over to inspect a display of old matchlock pistols that adorned a section of wall. Weapons were not exactly the decoration he would have chosen for the office of a man of the cloth, but he reflected these were probably remnants of a bygone era, when the palace belonged to the marquis who had founded the city. He was examining them with interest when a soft cough caused him to turn. The monk who had been standing by the window was now right behind him.

  “Brother Paul,” Sir Ander said, astonished.

  “Sir Ander,” said the monk, bowing. “I hope you are well.”

  “Fine, thank you,” said Sir Ander. “And you? I trust you have recovered from the terrifying experiences at the abbey.”

  “God be praised, I have. I heard about Father Jacob’s injury,” Brother Paul added. “I want you to know I have been praying for him.”

  “Thank you, Brother,” said Sir Ander.

  “You seem surprised to see me,” said Brother Paul with a faint smile.

  “I must confess that I am,” said Sir Ander. “The last I heard you were residing at the Arcanum under Seal.”

  “The provost of the Arcanum decided to release me,” said Brother Paul. “Given the attack on Westfirth—so similar to the attack on the abbey—he felt there was no need to keep me under Seal. The provost would have consulted Father Jacob before he removed the Seal, but of course, that was not possible given the circumstances. The provost was then good enough to place me in the service of the grand bishop.”

  “Indeed,” said Sir Ander, frowning.

  Brother Paul’s argument made perfect sense, Sir Ander reflected, and yet he had the feeling Father Jacob would have argued most strongly against releasing the monk. In Sir Ander’s mind, there were still a great many unanswered questions regarding Brother Paul.

  Brother Paul was as pasty and pale as Sir Ander remembered from the last time they had met at the abbey. Brother Paul had been the nuns’ confessor and had escaped the massacre because he had not been at the abbey the night of the murders. He wore tinted spectacles that protected his eyes from the light, even though the office was cool and shadowy, only dimly lit from the sun shining through a stained-glass window. He had told Sir Ander that he was subject to severe headaches and the spectacles helped alleviate them.

  “How is Brother Barnaby?” Brother Paul asked. “I assume he is tending Father Jacob.”

  Sir Ander felt a jab of pain.

  “Brother Barnaby was lost during the attack,” Sir Ander said, gritting his teeth on the words.

  “I am truly sorry to hear this,” said Brother Paul sadly. “He saved me from the demons’ torment. I will pray for his soul, that he may be fit to enter heaven.”

  Sir Ander glared at the monk. He wanted to say angrily that if ever a soul was fit to enter heaven without the need for prayer, it was the soul of the gentle Barnaby. Sir Ande
r swallowed his words. Brother Paul would have been extremely shocked at such blasphemy. Sir Ander changed the subject.

  “You are assigned to the grand bishop,” said Sir Ander. “Forgive me, Brother, but I thought you had chosen to live a life apart from men, spending your time alone in the wilderness in prayer and meditation.”

  “That was my intent,” Brother Paul conceded. “I was happy in my hermitage and loath to leave it. God made me see that I am needed in the world, to assist others, especially since these terrible events. I offered my services to the grand bishop and he was kind enough to give me the position of courier.”

  Brother Paul glanced at a leather satchel he had placed on the floor beside him. Sir Ander did not quite see how being the grand bishop’s errand boy would help others, but held his tongue. Brother Paul said no more, and Sir Ander was relieved to see the door open and the priest appear, saying the archbishop would see the Knight Protector now and asking Brother Paul if he would be so kind as to continue waiting.

  “God bless you, Sir Ander,” said the monk. “And may God’s blessing be with Father Jacob.”

  Sir Ander entered the office. The archbishop was standing in the center of the room, still in conference with his visitor. Lovaasen was tall and thin, an energetic and active man in his midthirties. The archbishop was not often found sitting behind a desk. He liked to be out doing God’s work, though Sir Ander found it surprising that such work took the archbishop most often to the homes of the elite and powerful, and only rarely to the slums. The archbishop was a friend of the king and had his eye on the grand bishop’s miter. Sir Ander was aware, from certain things Father Jacob had said, that the grand bishop, Ferdinand de Montagne, was not overly fond of Lovaasen.

  Sir Ander bowed respectfully and waited to be noticed. When he recognized the archbishop’s visitor, he understood immediately why Sister Elizabeth had warned him to tread warily. Father Jacob had once named the three most dangerous people in the world: Sir Henry Wallace of Freya, the Countess Cecile de Marjolaine of Rosia, and this man—Dubois, the grand bishop’s “creature,” his spy, confidant, and agent.