The other elf didn’t respond, glaring at Rudyick. “You ran — when Old Nick caught me, you didn’t even try to help me! You ran!”
Rudyick waved a hand at Aurelius and Clarinda. “Yes, I ran, and what did I do? I found help! Let’s not forget that. If not for these two, I would’ve had to go to another world to get aid.”
“Perhaps, you’re right...,” Volund said, “and the help you’ve found is exactly the one we were going to search for after learning that the Codex Lacrimae was awakening again. The Wheel of Fortune is finally turning, and perhaps this time it’s spokes will land favorably for our people. We must make haste before others enter the hunt. We’ll ask them to come with us to the Sviddengen and perhaps…”
While the two elves spoke, Aurelius knelt to the ground to retrieve the leather envelope. Clarinda noticed what he was doing and crossed the few steps between them at a run.
“Oh, God, not again!” She shouted. “Santini, don’t touch that!”
Aurelius closed his hand on the packet at the same time that Clarinda grabbed his shoulder.
Both Hospitaller and Norn disappeared in a flash of golden light.
Chapter 4
The Citadel of Hel
Aurelius shivered. The white, marble floor of the long, cavernous gallery seemed a sheet of ice, so frosty was the chill that radiated through his lowered knee and the toe of his boot. Retrieving Hav’s leather envelope and slipping it into a pocket within his robe, he rose to his feet, numbed by freezing air as his breath steamed away in smoke-like plumes.
Clarinda slammed the quarterstaff into his chest, driving him backward.
“Will you stop touching things?” she shouted. “You’re not on Midgard anymore and…,” she stopped talking as she realized where they’d been transported.
“Grande, la vostra curiosità ci ha portato verso l’inferno,” she muttered in irritation.
“That’s a bit much,” Aurelius protested, rubbing his chest and continuing his survey of the surroundings. “My curiosity hasn’t literally taken us to Hell. You heard Hav. He said we had to follow Old Nick to get that bit of coral, and then he can free the rest of the water elementals; if you want to blame somebody, blame the fossegrim, not me.”
“Well, whoever’s to blame, the fact remains that we’re in Hel,” Clarinda stated, nodding toward the windows. “This is the high tower of Hela’s Citadel. Urd took me here a couple times on our tours of the Nine Worlds.”
“Urd?” Aurelius asked. “Isn’t she one of the Norns?”
“You know the myths?” Clarinda said, impressed. “I’m still learning, so I spend most of my time by a fiery pool reading about them.” She indicated one of the windows. “Come with me, I want to show you something.”
They walked to the side of the great hall. Grey sunlight shone brilliantly through the high window, which stretched upwards as high as the tallest trees in the forest of Alfheim.
“None of this is going the way I expected,” Clarinda said softly. “Look down there.”
Shrieking winds drove a slanting snowfall that thrummed with rattling force against the lead-lined glass panes. Hundreds of feet beneath their vantage loomed only a dark abyss.
“We..we’re...ne-ne-ne-never going to get out of he-he-here unless I-I-I can get the necklace to work!” Clarinda spoke fiercely, anger vying with incapacity as her teeth chattered. Aurelius turned from the window, about to make a wisecrack and saw that the girl was really cold, her lips starting to turn blue.
He removed his Hospitaller robe and cast it about her shoulders, holding the quarterstaff while she tried to fasten the cloth with a beautiful, triquerta brooch. She was too cold. The jewelry clattered to the floor. Aurelius picked it up, fastened the garment, and then held her badly shaking hands within his for a moment. She blushed as he looked at her.
“You wear bella gioielli,” he commented awkwardly.
“Grazie,” she managed to say, “and, thank you for the cloak. It helps.” She gave him a curiously appraising look as he returned the quarterstaff to her.
He smiled, feeling a warmth at her words that surpassed the frosty air. “Perhaps we should start over,” he said. “My name is Servius Aurelius Santini. I take it from your accent that you’re from Italy?”
“Venice,” she said. “I’m Clarinda.”
“Clarinda Trevisan,” he said, remembering, “if Old Nick was telling the truth?”
“He was.”
“Ah,” Aurelius mused. “I’ve heard of the Trevisans. You have more ships than most of the families sailing out of the Arsenale,” he said, referring to the shipyard being constructed in that city of lagoons. “Are you part of the immediate family? a daughter? cousin?”
“Angelo was my father,” Clarinda said. “He died a few nights ago in Caesarea.”
“Oh, I’m sorry — my condolences to you,” Aurelius offered, while wondering at the strange turns this dream kept taking. He looked at Clarinda — the grief and anger in her eyes certainly seemed all too real. “Ripose in pace,” he added, “May he rest in peace.”
“Grazie,” she said softly.
“Wait. Did you say Caesarea? Is that what Old Nick was talking about — why he’s so angry at you?”
“I thought — I hoped — that Evremar died the same night as my father. I...started a battle there with some friends. We won and got rid of Evremar, and I heard reports that he’d been taken in by the Archbishop there —”
“Monachus,” Aurelius interjected. “He’s something else. I met him once a couple of years ago when he was making a tour of the military orders. I didn’t like him.”
“Nor did I,” Clarinda said. “I suppose after what just happened, we know that Evremar survived the battle. Obviously, I mean, he’s il Diavolo. My father never stood a chance.”
Aurelius looked out the window at the blizzard. “I wonder if my father ever ran into yours?” he asked thoughtfully. Something about this place made him keep thinking about memories long buried. Perhaps it was the presence of a fellow Italian, or perhaps this was part of Hela’s realm. Whatever the reason, he began to feel nostalgic and wistful about his family.
“Did you…why would your padre know mine?”
“My family sails, too. The Santinis?” He wouldn’t have been surprised if she didn’t know of his kin, but a strange look came into her eyes.
“Do you know them?” he asked.
“I...recently met a Paolo Santini,” Clarinda said.
“That’s my brother!” Aurelius exclaimed.
“Really?” she said. “He was in Constantinople and said that his brother died in the Holy Land, at Mecina.”
“That’s me!” Aurelius asserted, the excitement at odds with what he was saying. “They think I’m dead.”
“I see,” Clarinda said, but not seeing.
Silence fell for a moment.
“If I may ask, why?”
“Do they think I’m dead?”
“Si.”
Aurelius paused, embarrassed again. Why did she have this effect on him? Everything seemed fine in his own mind when he thought about his past, but it sounded absurd when he tried explaining anything to her.
“I...after Mecina...I...I killed many people there. I didn’t think that I could go back home, and then after I was taken in at this castle — the Krak des Chevaliers — I just kept putting off the idea.” He couldn’t explain everything to her. Not now. “How was Paolo?”
“So, you are that Santini? The ‘Butcher of Mecina?’”
He winced, hurt flaring in his eyes, and turned from her to look out the window.
She almost reached a hand out to him, but instead tightened her grip on the quarterstaff and waited.
“Yes, and no,” he finally said, his voice emotional. “My brother — how was he?”
“He was brokering a deal for me to transport some goods.”
Aurelius flinched, the surprise helping him recover himself somewhat, and he looked at her curiously.
“Broker
ing?” he shook his head. “No, perhaps it’s someone pretending that he’s my brother. Paolo had no interest in the family business whatsoever.”
“He looked like you,” Clarinda said, “a bit older, though, and shorter.”
“Shorter? That could be him. When I left, I’d just passed him by a finger’s breadth — but, business? No. That was always Roberto’s and my interest.”
The merchant’s daughter laughed. “Your interest? That’s the last thing I expected to hear you say.”
“What?”
She waved a hand up and down at his fighting togs and weapons, then at his thick robe she was wearing. “All this — I can barely think of you as a monk, you’re so...so, much a knight.”
Clarinda’s face flamed crimson, the whiteness of the long gallery accentuating the reddening skin that flared down her throat. “I mean...how could so much change in five years?”
“Mecina.” He said simply.
“It’s been five years since Mecina,” Clarinda said, “perhaps he learned the family business while you were gone.”
“No, no,” Aurelius said with certainty. “I volunteered to go on the pilgrimage so he could study at Bologna and become a cleric. Padre told him that if he really wanted to work in any of the royal courts, he’d need to study at university.” Aurelius hesitated. “That never made much sense to me, especially with his personality — he was always sneaking out of the house to meet girls and spend the night in town. It was strange when he said that he wanted to get into diplomacy at some level.”
Aurelius paused again, frowning at a memory — the moment of sea-change in their relationship, when Paolo told him that he’d been visited by an angel in the middle of the night and awakened wanting to be more like his devout brother.
“Didn’t Saint Augustine get visited by an angel?” Paolo had asked, throwing pebbles into the ocean off the Sicilian coast.
“Not an angel, a child,” the thirteen-year-old Servius replied. “Augustine heard a child’s voice over the wall in his back yard telling him, ‘ tolle, lege ’ — ‘take it up, and read.’ He went inside and found a passage in the Bible that changed his life.”
“Correcto. That’s what I want to do — change my life.”
Servius looked up from the manuscript he was reading, finally giving his full attention to his older brother. “Veramente, Paolo? You’re really going to go to university?”
Paolo shook his head. “Someday, but we’ve all got obligations. So, no. I won’t be going to the university anytime soon. You heard Padre last night. I have to go with ‘Uncle Servius’ on this pilgrimage.”
“I still don’t get it. We’d never even heard of this ‘uncle’ until last autumn,” Servius protested. “Why is Padre insisting that you go to the Holy Land?”
“It’s the right thing to do,” Paolo said, bending over to find another pebble he could toss into the roaring waves. “Roberto will be heading to Genoa with Padre when you go to Calabria in June — they’re trying to get support for another crusade, and Padre thinks that it’s the right thing to do for the family and for the politics of it.”
“The politics of it?”
“Certamente. Think about it. If we’ve got a member of the family over in the Levant making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, it’ll play well when Padre’s in Rome and Genoa.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Servius said. “That might also be helpful for your future, if you really want to get retained at one of the royal courts someday.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Paolo said. “I’ll get the experience there first, and then go to university at Bologna after I get back.”
“But, you’ll lose so much time,” Servius said, still frustrated because none of this made sense to him. “If I went, we’d have a member of the family there, and you could start at university this year. I’ve had so much training by Devrone and Brother Tomas that I should have my pick of monasteries when I get back.” He rolled the manuscript tightly and bound it with a ribbon. “That’s the logic we should follow. I’ll talk with Padre, and then you’ll talk with him about going to the university. I’ll go, Paolo. You stay here.”
“Are you sure, fratello ?” Paolo asked, surprise on his face.
“As you said, it’s the right thing to do. We’re family, and you and I are still going to do right by the family, only switching places. Besides, I want to see the Holy Land. I can’t imagine how inspiring it must be to walk in Jerusalem.”
Paolo had hugged him hard, his eyes shining. “I’ll never forget this, Servius — grazie, grazie. It’s like Saint Augustine with the child’s voice; my life is completely going to change because of you doing this.”
“I hope so, fratello,” Servius said, grinning. “No more late-night trips into town to meet girls. It looks like we’ll both be taking vows to God.”
Paolo crossed himself. “I’m ready, thanks to you, Servius. Let’s go talk to Padre. He’ll need to arrange things with Uncle Servius.”
“Maybe I’ll start calling myself Aurelius to avoid confusion,” Servius said as they departed the beach.
“You’re going to have an amazing time,” Paolo promised.
“I just wish I had a better feeling about this new ‘uncle’ of ours,” Servius said. “He sure doesn’t look like Padre’s brother.”
“They say that every family has a black sheep,” Paolo replied. “Perhaps when you get to know him better on the voyage things will change… .”
Aurelius grimaced. Things had changed on that voyage. His relationship with ‘Uncle’ Servius had culminated in the man’s death at the Battle of Mecina, and Aurelius’s forced change of identity led to a desperate fight for survival over the last five years in a foreign land.
Clarinda shivered again. It felt as if the cold was starting to slow the blood in her veins.
He noticed and moved closer to her. “Here, if you don’t mind, let me put an arm around you while we walk...it might help a little.”
“Don’t you feel it?”
He smiled. “I can’t feel my feet or hands, but we need to keep moving.”
“Grazie,” she said, accepting his offer and moving closer to him as he put an arm protectively around her shoulders.
The silence returned between them, this time for a longer duration. She was feeling too comfortable in his arms, thankful and excited by the closeness they had with one another, but distrusting how good it felt. Still, her practical side didn’t want to lose the warmth he was providing!
“Thank you for warming me,” Clarinda said softly, leaning appreciatively into him.
“Uh, you’re welcome,” Aurelius said, realizing how good she felt and not knowing what to do. He flushed, recalling the vows that he intended to take, but still not moving away.
She noticed his embarrassment and smiled at him, relaxing for the first time since they’d met. There seemed to be a chink in his armor, a vulnerability she hadn’t noticed before.
Aurelius glanced at her and looked quickly away as they continued down the corridor. It was the first time he’d seen her smile, and the knight found that it transformed her entire face. She was truly beautiful, capable of merriness that he hadn’t thought possible from what he’d seen of her in their short time together. But, remembering again that he was going to become a priest, he was about to lift his arm from her shoulders when they heard a clicking sound behind them.
Tip, tap, tip, tap, tip….
As he began to turn, something pushed sharply into Aurelius’s back that felt like the sharp jab of a blade. The impact was of such force that he slammed into the panes of the window. Grunting at the collision, he tried to spin defensively against the assault, but his legs were swept out from under him and he crashed onto the floor.
As he attempted to gain his feet, a robed figure advanced upon him with an enormous, iron-spiked cudgel in its hand. Clarinda swung her quarterstaff only to be blocked by the attacker, who swept under her guard and butted her backwards. She landed in the middle of t
he floor between the walls, then scrambled to her feet, quarterstaff at the ready.
Aurelius, too, rose, unsheathing his sword.
The figure stopped at the sight of the blade, its cowl slipping down. Gorge rising in his throat, Aurelius faltered at the sight of his opponent. He faced a robe-covered skeleton! Long blond hair cascaded from an ivory skull, highlighting a silver tiara, and the thick brown robe was cinched at the waist by a belt of blue-glowing crystal.
Tip, tap.
The white foot bones clicked upon the marble flooring and the grim figure advanced a step upon the Hospitaller and Norn. Aurelius swallowed hard and raised his sword.
“Stay…” his throat was dry and the words came hoarsely. He took a breath as pain started to flare through his body. “Stay back,” he said more firmly and tried to reach the agonizingly painful area on his back with his injured hand. He withdrew it, drenched in blood.
“Aurelius, you’re hurt,” Clarinda said. “Your back’s a mess.”
“Ingen våpen her,” rattled the skeleton with a female’s voice through grinning teeth. “There are no weapons here. None beside my own. You should be crossing into Hel over the Giöll River, not through Hela’s abode. You should’ve come over the Crystal Bridge. You broke the rules.”
Tip, tap. The skeleton advanced again. Tip, tap.
“Whichever path you took, though,” she continued, “you are here. The Blod Betaling — the Blood Payment — it must be made.”
“I said to stay back!” Aurelius shouted. He retreated with sword raised, noting that his boots were leaving a smeared reddish trail on the floor.
Tip, tap, tip, tap.
The skeleton moved quickly toward Aurelius and he swung his blade. He struck true, a two-handed swing that caught the attacker’s body on the shoulder. He might as well have been hitting a statue because, without a visible reaction to the strike, the skeleton continued her clicking steps and moved hard into the knight. Gripping his throat with a bony hand, she drove him into the wall. His back exploded into a mass of painful fires, and darkness began to cloud his vision. Pinned, he struggled to raise his sword, but the corpse’s other hand was upon him like a vise, cracking his hand as she squeezed. His blade slipped from limp fingers.
The Codex Lacrimae Page 30
