The Crystal Empire (5 page)

As always, when there were rumors about the sighting of a ship—today’s was the first he’d himself seen—Sedrich begged to hear again of the Invaders of the Elder World. It had been his favorite bedtime tale in infa
n
cy. Now it was his favored conversation at the evening time.

“We’ve no way of telling truly whether they be Invader vessels,” Ilse cautioned, “or those fashioned by some other stranger.”

Fumbling beneath the scalding water, Sedrich produced the towel he’d worn, wrung it out, and set it on the tile beside the bath.

“This I know, Mother, for they ne’er make landfall in the New World.”

“So ’tis said....” She pursed her lips, thinking, Sedrich knew, of those two items which, more than any others, made life as it was lived in their village possible—cotton cloth and iron pipe—and of the generally accep
t
ed expl
a
nation that they originated in villages much like this one, “far to the south.”

“Likeliest”—his father turned the tap to cool the tub, watching his son from the corner of his eye—”they be not Invaders, for then they’d come ashore, wreaking conquest as of old.”

Sedrich wriggled in the hot water, delightful shivers of terror trave
l
ing up his backbone.

His mother continued. “All we possess are legends, Sedrich, of which the Sisterhood—”

She looked to her husband. “Yes, and the Cult, after its own fas
h
ion—are custodian.”

Owaldsohn gazed through the steam, out the great windows to the sea beyond.

“Those legends speak of times in Eldworld when great men dared greater deeds.”

“Yet,” answered Ilse, “they were cut down in their pride, nine hu
n
dred nine and ninety out of every thousand. In weakened numbers, those remaining could venture naught but to retreat before unnamed and n
u
merous Invaders from the south.”

“Unnamed,” repeated Sedrich, almost to himself.

His mother heard.

“No tale or book I know of names them.”

She nodded toward a case of volumes across the room, each hand-lettered, passed down to fewer heirs each generation by their predece
s
sors.

“See for yourself, young sir.”

Sedrich made a face.

“I am a blacksmith, Mother. I want naught to do with books.”

“Yet you show a talent for them ’twould be sinful to neglect. Pity poor Frae who, unmothered and unlettered, must needs learn to read and write from me five years later than she ought.”

“Frae is a girl!”

Owaldsohn chuckled, then assumed serious aspect.

“Would I had time for learning, son, though most men cannot. ’Twould be a help in the forge—fashioning springs, for instance. As is, I need r
e
member size and heat and quench and draw for a thousand which were better marked down.

“Should something e’er happen to me—”

All three rapped on the resin-impregnated tub-edge.

“—you’d at least possess the writing of it.”

Ilse spoke. “Sedrich, you should value Frae more. She is intelligent, no ordinary barren female falling into the Sisterhood for aught else be
t
ter. Hers is a powerful gift.”

She mused, “’Twould be a merry thing to induct my own ma
r
riage-daughter.”

Owaldsohn made a noise which was half laugh, half growl.

“Sedrich is too young by far for such discussion to be decent, Ilse!”

“Ne’er any harm in discussing, dear,” his wife replied. “Plans for Sedrich’s future are important. He was such a long time coming! We won’t be with him long to guide his footsteps.”

Young Sedrich’s ears reddened as his parents spoke of him thus in his presence. As before, the embarrassed reaction was disguised by the heat of the bath.

“Nor should we be, woman, for, by St. Willem and St. Klemmet”—by the doorway, both dogs perked their ears at mention of their names—“he’ll soon be a man in his own right!”

“Which was my point.” Ilse overlooked Owaldsohn’s self-contradiction. “Husband, always you force me to consider truths I might not otherwise confront. I’ll return the favor: I see no reason not to begin learning letters, e’en for one of your venerable years!”

Bested, Owaldsohn made a sour face.

Sedrich laughed.

Spilling both their drinks in the doing of it, his father seized the boy and pressed his head beneath the water, holding him there as he flailed. Of a sudden, Sedrich fell limp, lying thus, face below the surface, for a long time.

Owaldsohn, in alarm, hauled him up and shook him.

A moment passed.

Then Sedrich’s breath exploded into his father’s face. He laughed u
n
til his own turned redder even than it had been.

“I take refuge with the Lord of the Daybreak from the evil of what He has created, from the evil of darkness when it gathers, from the evil of
the women who blow on knots, from the evil of an envier when he
envies.”—
The Koran, Sura
CXIII

Beneath the slanted beams of a loft he’d claimed as his own upon first leaving his baby crib, Sedrich pondered his parents’ words as he prepared for sleep.

The room was small, cluttered with the many artifacts of imaginative boyhood.

From the center joist dangled an artful miniature rowboat equipped with crank and paddle, which he’d pieced together from parchment scraps and bits of wire.

Where one wall was vertical the boy had hung a dozen facsimiles of knives, swords, axes, edged weapons customers had ordered, which Owaldsohn had first try-fashioned out of wood. One or two more fanc
i
ful in form young Sedrich had carved out, which had not yet found a life in steel.

That would wait until his eye and hand were surer.

No thought had he given to marriage, being but eleven—although precocious. This last he understood with an unmodest certainty few adults carry away from childhood. He was aware no Helvetian was a
l
lowed to marry until a child of the union-to-be had been conceived. From a boy’s point of view, marriageable girls were mercifully rare. In their village of a hundred houses, but two families boasted of children Sedrich’s age—Owaldsohn and Parcifal. Of families with younger i
n
fants there were pe
r
haps another three or four.

The full moon, orange on the horizon, poured itself through the round leaded window set into the other vertical end-wall. Sedrich blew the candle out and slid between the worn, familiar blankets of the low pallet he was accustomed to sleep upon. He lay back, arms folded behind his head, and thought about his village as if it were the dwelling-place of strangers he, a visitor from far away, must strive to understand.

Rather a lot of couples, he knew—and knew he wasn’t supposed to know—had conceived, married, and suffered disappointment which the village women gossiped of afterward, but which Sedrich couldn’t quite fathom. What was a “stillbirth”?

One or two households had grown children yet unmarried.

One or two there were whose children had found mates.

He knew of various widows and widowers—of these, Old Roger the resiner was crossing customary barriers by teaching Sedrich something of his arcane craft.

He reminded himself also of the arrangements made for Si
s
ters—likewise, he supposed, for Cult Brothers—who, despairing at last of finding someone to love, or of making a child, had given themselves to their beliefs. They were many, living in open compounds, one at the west end of the village, another at the south, rows of simple ca
b
ins centered about common structures of gathering and meditation. Each cabin door faced outward, for the sake of privacy, from the center of the compound.

No one, Sedrich realized with sudden insight, ever gave up entirely.

His own mother had been one such before the surprise of Sedrich’s quickening.

Thus the population of the world which Sedrich knew lay somewhere between an uncounted four hundred and five hundred. When the proper time arrived—oh, but that was a long way off yet!—did he show interest in some one someone (for well he understood his parents, never expec
t
ing at their hands an arrangement against his own inclinations), this “someone” would be invited for visits, at first family dinners, then the bathing ritual which preceded the meal (he blushed again to contemplate his father’s threat regarding Frae), and then at last, did all proceed aright, for the entire night.

The colloquial expression, Sedrich squirmed to recall, was “bu
n
dling,” every precaution taken to assure that the young couple was left unattended, undiverted save by one another’s presence. The tasteless hazing would come later, when a young man led his pregnant bride b
e
fore a Sister who would sanctify what already existed.

The whole idea filled him with foreboding—with the oddest feelings, like a deep-down itch, somehow pleasant, somehow demanding, som
e
how mysterious.

It made sleep difficult.

Yet not impossible...

2

He awoke a while later to a rattle-pounding which shook the house.

“Sedrich! Sedrich! Wake up! Wake up!”

At their posts beside the door downstairs, Willi and Klem began barking.

The cries were for his father.

He recognized the voice.

Wrapping a blanket about him, Sedrich seized his dagger—this being no mere wooden model—where it lay beside his pallet, and placed a foot upon the folding ladder. The steps swung beneath his weight, co
m
ing to rest in the hallway below.

Already his mother and father were descending the short fixed flight to the ground floor.

Tossing aside the small pillow-sword he’d carried from their be
d
room, Owaldsohn took his great blade
Murderer
from the wall. As he quieted the animals, his free hand reached to give his wife the shoulder-bow.

“Yes, yes,” he shouted at the ironbound door, more from annoyance than lack of recognition. “Who is it?”

“Your neighbor!” came a muffled voice. “Let me in! I bear ill ti
d
ings!”

“’Twas e’er true,” the blacksmith muttered.

He let his hand drop to the latch, which he unfastened.

“What cause have you to rouse us up this late, Hethri Parcifal?”

The oaken door swung to reveal a night-robed figure somewhere b
e
tween the two Sedrichs in years, tall, and—thought the youn
g
er—odd-shaped. From stooped, narrow shoulders Parcifal tapered under purple draping to wide-set hips and plump behind. With the old green scarf about his neck, he resembled an eggplant, although he lacked, as yet, a belly to match the hips. The green-wrapped neck was skinny, the narrow head balding.

Parcifal blinked as he stepped inside. The candle-lantern Ilse carried dazzled him.

“Speak of rousing,” he began, “whate’er have you done to rouse the Brotherhood?”

Listening, Ilse carried candle to hearth and began laying a fire. She fetched a kettle, hanging it on a hook as flames crackled up to reach its blackened bottom.

Owaldsohn answered, “Whene’er did those blotchheads want som
e
thing to rouse them, Hethri?”

He tossed a glance at his son, whose hands still gripped the dagger, then looked back to Parcifal.

“Tell me what they’re doing, and I’ll tell you, if I can, what we have done.”

As if from exhaustion, Parcifal sat upon a chair Ilse kept by the door. He ran a hand across his forehead and looked up at the blacksmith.

“Oln Woeck,” he groaned, glancing in apology at Sedrich, “has been sowing hints about the character of your son.”

Owaldsohn shook his shaggy head. “Also, no doubt, about those who are bringing him up.”

He found a chair of his own, placing the scabbarded
Murderer
b
e
tween his knees as if it were a cane. The strap crossed his hairy thigh, trailing to the floor.

Both dogs arose, settling themselves again at his feet.

“But ’tis naught new. Why the midnight visit, Hethri?”

The man opened his mouth to speak. He was interrupted by a low rolling growl from Klem. Willi shambled to the door, where he began pacing uneasily back and forth.

Parcifal stopped, cocking an ear toward the door.

“Too late!” he whispered, eyes focused somewhere other than the room he sat in. “It has begun!”

It could indeed be heard before it could be seen. No night-bird sang, no insect chirped in the dew-wet grass. The still air carried a dull thrumming which might at first have been mistaken for no more than the rush of blood through straining ears.