The Gathering Storm (97 page)

The emperor and his consort ascended to the dais and seated themselves to the acclaim of the crowd, although many fewer people had the privilege of so close an audience with Henry in this more intimate setting. Clerics and stewards crowded around behind the chairs, and through their legs Zacharias watched as one by one nobles came forward, knelt before the emperor and empress, and pledged their loyalty.

A buzz of conversation undercut these proclamations. A pair of clerics whispered, standing so close that they almost stood on him, yet they seemed unaware that he lay just a footstep behind the curtain.

“So, after all, the skopos chose the first day of Sormas, as I told you she would.”

“So you did.” Spoken grudgingly.

“That Bright Somorhas, the Fortunate One, should come into conjunction with the Child’s Torque, signifies the rightful ascension of the true heir.”

“That’s true enough, but I thought the signs were most auspicious for the twenty-second of Novarian, last year.”

“The Arethousan usurpers still had a foothold in the peninsula then. It would have seemed premature to claim an empire he did not control. It would have been tempting fate.”

“So the skopos said. Yet how could you or I or anyone have foreseen it would take three years to drive the bandits and usurpers and rebels out of southern Aosta?”

“That’s all in the past. The last Arethousan heretic has fled, the Jinna bandits are dead, and Tiorno has capitulated at last—Look! But speak the name, and the Enemy winks into view! There is Lady Tassila and her nephew. Now that her brother is dead she is regent for the boy, but she intends to claim the duchy for herself and install her own children after her.”

“Can she do that?”

“Why not? Her brother fought against King Henry until last winter. The boy might bear a grudge because of the death
of the father. He can’t be trusted. There’s this new campaign they speak of, to take back the Dalmiakan shore from the Arethousans. They’ll need Lady Tassila’s troops and her loyalty in the army. I heard that Empress Adelheid—”

“Hsst.”

In a different tone, they spoke in unison. “Your Excellency.”

Feet shifted. The cloth of their robes creased as the two clerics dipped knees and heads, blocking his view of the chamber.

“I pray you,” said Hugh kindly. “If you would attend me?”

“Of course, Your Excellency! What do you wish?”

“Pray go to my chambers. Ask for my steward. He has in his keeping a small chest that I need brought to me.”

“Of course, Your Excellency!”

They hurried off. Zacharias saw a fine, clean, strong hand take hold of the curtain and, with a firm tug, twitch it entirely shut, closing him into a tunnel of darkness. Beyond the muffling curtain the oaths continued.

For a long time he lay there, fretting and anxious. He knew how to run, but he didn’t know how to fight. He could babble, but he could not talk himself out of the maze he had stumbled into. Hathui had fled because she had no real power in the king’s court except the king’s favor, now turned against her. Yet he had pledged his loyalty to Marcus in exchange for teaching. His loyalties ought to lie here, but the bond with Hathui clutched too tight. If he betrayed her, then he was nothing but a soulless slave in bondage to those who meant to ruin or even kill her.

After some time, he groped around the pallet and, as softly as he could, rolled himself off into the gap between the mattress and a wall. He rested. When he could breathe normally again, he pushed up to hands and knees and crawled forward along the wall, trembling and sweating. He had not gone farther than the length of the pallet when he collapsed and lay there for what seemed a year before he could try again. The curtain that concealed the wall rippled as folk moved along its length. Once or twice it sagged in so far that it brushed him; the gap between curtain and wall wasn’t more than the span of his arms.

No one noticed.

He kept crawling.

Maybe there were miracles, or perhaps the curtain only served to allow servants to come and go in concealment. A door revealed itself to his questing fingers, and with great effort he rose to his knees and pushed up the latch. It opened inward. He fell into the adjoining chamber and lay there stunned and aching and gasping with his head and half his torso on a carpet and his hips and legs on the other side of the threshold.

At last he dragged himself through and pushed the door shut with a foot. The latch clicked into place.

He sprawled with eyes shut, unable to move. Just lay there as his muscles twitched and he thought he might melt into the rug whose fibers pressed into his cheek. A friendly whippet nosed him, licked his face, and, when he did not respond, curled up congenially against the curve of his bent knees.

Perhaps he slept.

The next thing he knew, hands took hold of his arms and dragged him over the rug as the whippet whined resignedly. He cracked his eyes open to see that day had fled. Lamps lit a chamber hazy with shadows that congealed into things he could recognize: a table carved of ebony wood, a magnificent broad bed hung around with curtains, two massive chests, a woman dressed in cloth of gold trimmed with purple who turned to regard him with a faint expression of surprise on her pretty face.

“Is this the same one?” she asked as the hands released him, turning him over and dropping him supine on the floor a body’s length from her.

“Yes, Your Majesty. This is the one.” Hugh stepped out of the shadows or perhaps through an unseen door. A servant scuttled past him to place a brazier full of red-hot coals next to a wall, then vanished back the way he had come. “I cannot stay long. It must be done quickly.”

The empress nodded, still staring curiously at Zacharias, but as she approached the bed, her attention shifted to the man lying asleep there, whom Zacharias had not seen before.

It was the emperor.

“Ai, God,” she whispered as she sank down beside her
husband, her hands clasped in prayer. “Can we save him, Father Hugh?”

“We can, but we must not falter, although the road seems dark. You have given him the sleeping draught?”

“Yes. He fell asleep just after the midnight bell. My servingwomen will not disturb us. They believe that he and I intend to make a new child tonight, one born of empire, not just to a mere king and queen. The four guards outside are those I would trust with my life. They will not betray us.”

“So we must hope. If they do, all is lost, for then the skopos will know what we intend.”

The shimmer of lamplight twisted across her face, making her look young and vulnerable, but there remained an iron tightness to the set of her mouth that suggested she was bent on a cruel course. “Aosta belongs to Henry and me at last, Father. Henry would go north if he could. You know this.”

“I know this.”

“Yet now we are told that it is the emperor’s destiny to ride east, into Dalmiaka to make war on Arethousa. And for what? For what? For a heap of stones, so my spies tell me! I had hoped we could be quit of this awful daimone by now, that we could restore him.”

“We dare not.”

A tear rolled down her cheek as she regarded the sleeping emperor. “Look at him as he sleeps! Look at his beloved face!” She touched his cheek tenderly, brushed her fingers through his hair. “Now and again I swear to you, Father Hugh, just as he wakes I see him, a glimpse of him, behind his eyes. He is angry. I swear this to you. He is angry that this cruel thing has been done to him! And done by the ones who love him most!”

“It was the only way to protect him. The Holy Mother will kill him if he does not do exactly as she wishes.”

“I know the skopos claims that this crown of tumbled stones is all that will save the world from a terrible cataclysm. That our empire must hold the lands where the crown lies. So must we war against the Arethousans who control that territory now!”

“She is a woman obsessed with but one thing,” he agreed.

“Henry is not to be ordered about like a common captain,
not even by the skopos! He would have insisted on marching north to Wendar now that our task here is through, now that the Empire is restored. He’s heard the reports of all these Eagles, bearing dire tidings. But if we’d abandoned Aosta before, we would have lost it forever. Now that our work in Aosta is done, we can march north to Wendar safely. The skopos can lead an army herself into Dalmiaka to fight the Arethousans. The chronicles tell us of Holy Mothers who have sent armies to do their bidding. Who have accompanied their soldiers. Why must she force Henry to her will?”

“That’s right.” As Hugh spoke, he moved closer yet to the bed where Henry slept and beautiful Adelheid bent in sorrow. “We must protect him in the only way we can. Now, Your Majesty. I pray you. Just for this hour we must withdraw the one thing that protects him from any harm the skopos might do to him. He’ll never know that his protection lifts. He’ll never know when it is returned into his body, as it will be as soon as I have what I need.”

“So be it,” she murmured.

She drew the sign of the Circle at her breast and with a sigh moved to the foot of the bed. Hugh sat beside Henry’s sleeping form while she watched over them. The way the shadow and lamplight played over the scene made it difficult for Zacharias to see exactly what was going on, only that Hugh had a ribbon wrapped through his fingers. He passed that hand over Henry’s face as he murmured, and the ribbon came alive, writhing in his grip as if it were trying to escape him.

How could a ribbon move of its own will?

Henry’s body relaxed so abruptly, although he still slept, that the emperor appeared oddly different than he had a moment before although his eyes did not flutter, nor did he give any sign of awakening. The young empress gave a gasp, then bit her lip, but she did not move. She was as finely wrought a statue as any Zacharias had ever seen, a lovely woman in the prime of her youth and glorious in her empress’ raiment, golden and splendid. A true queen.

Hugh rose, crossed the room, and knelt beside Zacharias. The red ribbon tangled through his fingers lashed and slithered, but it could not escape. His golden hair shone where the light gilded it. His smile was gentle.

“What do you know of Prince Sanglant, Brother Zacharias?” he asked. “What of the Eagle, Hathui?”

He was too weak to run, but he was strong enough to keep silent. Never would he betray her.

Never.

Hugh touched the ribbon to Zacharias’ lips and in his melodious voice chanted the names of angels, holy creatures, bidding them to come to his aid.

A cool sensation slipped down Zacharias’ throat, insinuated itself in through his nostrils, and clawed its way into his eyes.

There was something inside him
.

He struggled, but he could do nothing. An aery presence flooded him, twisting into his skin, into his vitals, into the very hall where he stabled each of his memories, precisely placed and uncannily accurate.

“Can you hear me?” asked Hugh.

“I can,” his voice answered. His tongue formed the words, but he was not the one who spoke.

He fought, but in vain. He was both prisoner and slave.

“Tell me everything you know of Prince Sanglant. Where was he when last you saw him? What are his plans? Where is his daughter? What of the Eagle who escaped me? What does the prince know? What did Hathui see?”

The daimone that infested him brushed through his memories and, one by one, with his voice and his tongue, told his secrets.

Every one.

“… BROTHER Zacharias.”

He came to himself with a shock: he was free, untainted, unharmed, and alone in his body. The horror of that infestation thrilled along his skin, a million ants crawling, a thousand wasps stinging, too awful to contemplate.

“He cannot lie under the influence of the daimone,” Hugh was saying. “So. The Eagle escaped me, and told Prince Sanglant everything.”

“True,” said Adelheid thoughtfully. “But now we are forewarned and thus armed.”

Tears of shame streamed down Zacharias’ cheeks. The others did not notice. They had turned their backs on him.

“If he seeks griffins and sorcerers,” Adelheid continued, “and means to return with them and invade Aosta, then he must cross the Alfar Mountains over one of the three passes—St. Barnaria, Julier, or the Brinne.”

“Where is the Brinne Pass?” Hugh asked. “I’ve not heard of it.”

“It’s far to the east. Few folk use it, for it leads into eastern Avaria and the marchlands, and there’s little trade in that direction. The road lies up the northeast coast and inland into Zuola, where Marquesa Richildis rules. She is loyal to us.” Zacharias heard the turn of her foot on the carpet. Her voice
remained cool and collected, but her pacing betrayed agitation. “That is what we must do. We must post men in each of the passes to keep watch for the prince and his army.”

“It could be months or years before an army appears, if it ever does.”

“So be it. That is the only way we can hope to gain warning of his approach.”

“If he returns from the east,” said Hugh.

“If he does not, then he is no threat to us.”

“Perhaps. If he chooses to foment civil war in Wendar, then the north might rise against Henry.”