The Gathering Storm (74 page)

“Bartholomew, bring him. I want no more interruptions.”

“Yes, Father Benignus,” whispered Bartholomew, scratching his warty nose. He did not look at Alain; he sidestepped Stinker’s corpse and shied anxiously away from Sorrow’s growl. “Come, then, you fool,” he muttered in a low voice. “Can’t you see how dangerous it is to keep the good father waiting?”

“Who are these women?” Alain demanded, not moving.

“Fair winnings.”

“No better than slaves, fettered so. What happened to their children?”

“You ask too many questions. If you’re stupid enough, you’ll ask Father Benignus, not me. I’m just a poor man.”

“Even a poor man is made in God’s image, is he not? Is this right, what you do?”

Bartholomew had begun to shake, and by the sheen of sweat on his face and the pallor under his scruffy beard Alain suddenly realized that the man was terrified. He twisted the
cloth of his tunic between his fingers, right over a slight bulge in the fabric where he, too, wore an amulet.

Alain shook his head. “I am sorry to see any man suffer so, but surely you and the others had committed grave crimes. I see the residue of them everywhere. I pray you, friend, give some thought to the fate of your soul.”

“Here’s the wagon,” muttered Bartholomew. “Wait outside.”

Father Benignus had handed the reins of his horse off to a stammering youth, who held its bridle while the hooded man swung awkwardly from the saddle to the bed of the wagon and, bending double, vanished inside the shelter.

“Stay!” Rage and Sorrow sat beside the wagon, but they looked ready to spring into action. As Alain scrambled up onto the tailgate, he heard the startled murmurs of the bandits in camp. Everyone was watching, as wolves watched an injured elk, waiting for its thrashing to subside enough that they can dart in to tear out its throat.

He ducked in after Father Benignus.

“I knew you would come.” Father Benignus had his back to Alain as he lit a candle and dropped the amulet into a bowl filled with a clear liquid. It hissed, and the liquid boiled and subsided, leaching a strong vinegar smell. “The others fear me, as they should. You should, too.”

The tent vaulted just high enough that he could stand upright in the center of the wagon. The flame flickered uneasily as the man unwrapped the veil and took off his broad-brimmed hat. He had long, greasy hair that might once have been blond. That much Alain glimpsed in the dim light before Benignus turned to face him and sank down on a narrow bed, exhausted.

He was horribly disfigured. Lesions had eaten away half his face, exposing bone. His eyes wept pus, and sores had long since eaten his ears.

“Are you a leper?” Alain shuddered. Leprosy passed from one man to another by means of contamination. It would strike any man. It was God’s worst punishment. Yet having come so far Alain would not retreat.

Because Father Benignus had no lips it seemed that he
smiled all the time, a skeleton’s grimace. His teeth were good, strong and white; he was only missing two.

“I am no leper.” Benignus said mockingly in his soft voice. “I am least among men, but no leper. I am the one so easily forgotten even by those who used and discarded me. So easily forgotten by pawns and biscops alike, for you were only a pawn, as I was, weren’t you? Although Father Agius kept you close. Did he pollute you with his heresy?”

Alain recognized his voice, even distorted as it was by his affliction. He remembered pale blue eyes.

“I know who you are. I called you Brother Willibrod once. You were a cleric in the retinue of Biscop Antonia. She set you and the others to binding and working. You made the amulets that protected Lady Sabella’s forces from the spell laid on humankind by the glance of the guivre’s eye. They hoped to win the battle against King Henry.”

“But Father Agius killed the guivre! All our work for nothing! So we were abandoned, all of us who had poisoned ourselves doing God’s work! All but Heribert, who never soiled himself with binding and working! We were left to the mercy of the sisters of St. Benigna who locked us in an attic and left us to die!” Willibrod shook all over, then gagged, and reached for a flask hung from a nail pounded into the frame onto which the tent’s fabric had been nailed. His palsied hand could not grip the leather flask.

Alain stepped forward, unhooked the flask, and took out the stopper. Willibrod drank nothing stronger than vinegar, apparently, tinged with a scent so sharp it gave Alain a headache. He handed the flask to the other man. Even so, Willibrod could not hold it because he trembled so violently, and the flask tipped out of his hands and spilled onto the floorboards.

Gasping and choking, Willibrod cried out in pain as liquid pooled over the wood and began to soak in. He flung himself onto the floor and writhed there, licking it up like a frantic dog.

Alain dropped down beside him.

“Don’t touch me!” Willibrod jerked back from Alain’s hand only to slam into the bed’s wooden frame, but the impact had no effect on him.

“I pray you, Brother. Let me.” Alain salvaged the flask; perhaps a third of it had leaked out. The liquid stung his fingers and he winced at its touch.

Willibrod yanked the flask out of his hand and set it to his lips, gulping desperately while Alain hastily wiped his fingers on his leggings. The vinegar was raising blisters on his skin.

“What are you poisoning yourself with?” He blew on his hand, but blisters kept popping up where the liquid had burned him. Willibrod lowered the flask. His hands had stopped shaking, but his face was as ghastly as ever, his mouth caught in its eternal grimace. “The distillation of life,” he whispered, eyes lolling back like one drugged. “The souls of dying men. It makes a strong potion.” Had the pain of his affliction driven him insane? Yet the expression in his eyes had an awful clarity, the look of a man who knows he has done something so horrible that he can never atone for it.

“Kill me,” Willibrod begged hoarsely, voice barely audible.

The aroma of the vinegar and the putrid smell of sores and lesions stifled, as choking as smoke. Alain coughed, fighting for breath, and took a step closer to the other man just as a shudder passed through Willibrod’s frame, a palsy that made his body jerk and tremble. Alain bent to hold him down, but before he could touch him, Willibrod’s eyes shifted; the stark agony of his gaze dulled and his expression changed in the same manner that the sky changes color when a cloud covers the sun.

“Stand back!” The stink of his breath startled Alain badly—it was like the stench that rises off the battlefield, attracting carrion crows. It was the reek of decay and despair, yet he spoke like a triumphant general. “Do not touch me! Why have you come here?”

Outside, Rage barked twice, then fell silent.

Alain stepped backward to touch the entrance flap. “You are not Willibrod any longer.”

“Willibrod died in the attic under the care of the sisters of St. Benigna. Life did not leave him entirely, but he died nevertheless.” That death’s-head grin did not falter. “Now I am Father Benignus, taking my revenge on the world.”

“You are taking your revenge on folk who never did you any wrong. Folk who had nothing to do with the pain inflicted on you by Biscop Antonia and Lady Sabella. The evil done to you does not justify the evil you do to innocent others.”

“What makes you think I believe in right and wrong any longer? How did God reward my loyalty or the faithful service of my fellow clerics? Now I have power, and I will use it as the whim takes me. I do not serve either God or the Enemy. I serve only myself.” The potion had renewed him. He rose, looking vigorous and unexpectedly powerful, if no less hideous. “Are you with me, Brother Alain? Or do you prefer to die and let your soul feed mine?”

LIATH swept through the entrance and stopped short. It wasn’t only the run from Sorgatani’s wagon that made her heart race. What she saw made her tremble with anger and apprehension. The tent lay empty, its disarray evidence of the hasty departure of Sanglant and his retinue. He was gone, gone, gone. How could he be so stupid?

A bowllike lamp placed on a closed chest kindled with the force of her feelings. Flame sheeted the surface of the oil.

When she spoke, her voice shook. “He’ll have gone back to his army.”

“So we believe.” The shaman did not venture past the threshold, only ducked her head down to examine the interior. Behind her, the misty late night haze dissipated as dawn’s twilight lightened the sky.

“You
saw
him go?”

“I did not, but others did.”

“They didn’t stop him?”

The oil burned so fiercely that she reached with her mind’s eye and shuttered it as one might shutter a window. Just like that, the flames died. Smoke curled up, vanished,
and left a faint scent. She crossed to look down into the lamp. That brief flare had scarcely affected the level of the oil in the shallow lamp bowl. In Sorgatani’s wagon, while searching for Hanna, an entire bowl of oil had been consumed. She had imagined innocently, foolishly, that the force of her seeing had eaten up the oil quickly but now she realized that she had drifted within that gateway for far longer than she had guessed. She had searched for Hanna all night while Sanglant gathered up his daughter and his servant and staggered back to those he trusted.

She kicked the pallet he had lain on. It felt good to have something to hit.

“We’ll have to go after him,” she said, gathering up her weapons, which she had left on the ground between Blessing’s pallet and the tent wall.

“Why must you go?” asked Li’at’dano as Liath came outside. The centaur shaman seemed honestly puzzled. “We are allies, you and I. There is much to be done if we are to combat these Seven Sleepers. We have a long journey ahead of us, unless you can weave the crowns.”

“I’m going after my husband,” said Liath as she adjusted the weight of her sword and the angle of her quiver.

“He is only a male. You can find another mate when it is time for you to breed again.”

“Not one like him!” The comment gave her pause. She swept her gaze over the encampment. “Why are there no male centaurs among you? There are both men and women among your Kerayit allies, but I see no males among your kind at all.”

Li’at’dano blinked. For a moment Liath feared she had insulted the shaman. Although her features looked very like those worn by humankind, there was a subtle difference in the way expressions played across her face that betrayed her essential otherness.

She is like me but not like me, thought Liath. I cannot assume that she thinks as I do, or that our goals match exactly. We are allies, not sisters.

“I pray you,” she said aloud, wishing she had asked Sorgatani more questions about the centaurs. With Sorgatani, she had felt so entirely comfortable; she had felt that no comment
might be misconstrued, only explained or expanded on. She had felt understood, in harmony. “I pray you, I mean no insult if I have spoken of something that you consider taboo.”

“We are as we are, and as you see,” said Li’at’dano finally. “That you are otherwise is a mystery to us. It is the great weakness of humankind.”

“I don’t understand you, but I ask you, forgive me if I behave in any manner that goes against your ways. I must go after my husband. If there are any who will accompany me, I would appreciate an escort. I do not know where his camp lies.”

“You have an escort already.” Li’at’dano pointed toward the western slope. “The beast fears and desires your heart of fire.”

The griffin paced on the grassy hillside, keeping well out of range of the centaur bows. The rising sun gilded her feathers and she shone, her wing feathers shimmering as the light played across them, her beauty all the more striking because she was so huge and so dangerous and wild. Her tail lashed the grass; she was disturbed and anxious.

“God help me,” murmured Liath. Yet there was no way but to go past her, not if she wanted to follow Sanglant.

“West and north,” added Li’at’dano helpfully. “You can see the smoke of their campfires. Do not make us wait long. We must move quickly. The wheel of the heaven turns no matter what we do here on Earth.”

“I know.” She turned back to meet the shaman’s gaze, which appeared to her cold and steady but not hostile, simply quite another thing from the look of humankind. “I could have remained with my kinfolk, beyond the heavens,” she said at last. “I could have turned my back on humankind entirely, but I did not. These are the chains that bind me to Earth. I cannot escape them now, nor do I wish to.”

Li’at’dano nodded, an acknowledgment but not, precisely, comprehension. “It is not our way. I will not interfere with your customs, because you are not mine to command. Go quickly.”

Go quickly.

Suddenly the fear that something awful had happened to
Sanglant and her daughter overwhelmed her. She had journeyed so far; what if she lost him now?

As soon as the griffin saw Liath coming, she padded away, tail beating the grass like a whip. Liath followed her; no question that the beast knew where she was going, and Liath saw traces of a trail—not an actual path cut through the landscape but the evidence left by the passage of a small party some time earlier: broken stems of grass, beads of blood dried on glossy leaves; a spot where someone had lain down to rest. These minute signs reassured her, but they made her wonder.

“Why do you lead me?” she asked aloud. “Why does this path interest you? What do you seek?”

The griffin swung its huge head around to stare at her, its amber gaze unwinking. It ducked its head down and with a shudder unfolded its wings to flash in the sun like a host of swords before furling them along its body. They moved on at a brisk pace. Liath had to run to keep up with the griffin’s strides.

She began to suspect the worst when, soon after, they reached a place where the ground was churned up by the trampling of many feet, where the soil had been ripped up by the force of claws digging into the ground.

Sanglant had, after all, been hunting griffins. Yet he was far too weak to kill one. There wasn’t enough blood, only drops visible here and there. If he had been torn to pieces by the griffin, then it had not taken place here, and if he had slaughtered the griffin, a field of gore would have marked their struggle.