The Crystal Empire Read online

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE: a.d. 1349 - The Rat Crusade

  SURA THE FIRST: 1395-1400 A.H. The Land-Ship

  I: Young Sedrich

  II: Mistress of the Sisterhood

  III: The Cult

  IV: Frae Hethristochter

  V: Murderer

  VI: The Twisted Sails

  VII: The Sacred Heart

  VIII: The Fiery Cross

  IX: Fire-Tithe

  SURA THE SECOND: 1410-1418 A.H. The Agreement of Islam

  X: Ayesha

  XI: Rumors of War

  XII: Mochamet al Rotshild

  XIII: The Artichoke

  XIV: A Suitable Token

  XV: By Arrangement of the Caliph

  XVI: A Party of Every Section

  SURA THE THIRD: 1420 A.H.— Sedrich Fireclaw

  XVII: The Silver Chest

  XVIII: The Pillar of Fire

  XIX: The Ship of the Desert

  XX: The Botherhood of Man

  XXI: Delicate Negotiations

  XXII: Owald

  XXIII: The Sword of God

  XXIV: Knife Thrower

  SURA THE FOURTH: 1420 A.H.— The Voyageurs

  XXV: The Great Blue Mountains

  XXVI: Traveling Short Bear

  XXVII: Smoke Upon the Wind

  XXVIII: Factions of the Ancients

  XXIX: Blood-Haze

  XXX: Lishabha

  XXXI: The Aspen Grove

  XXXII: The Breath of God

  SURA THE FIFTH: 1420 A.H.— The Saw-Toothed Sword

  XXXIII: The Copper-Kilts

  XXXIV: Imperial Captive

  XXXV: Audience with the Sun

  XXXVI: Ship of the Cloud-Tops

  XXXVII: The Wanderer

  SURA THE SIXTH: 1420 A.H.— The Crystal Empire

  XXXVIII: The Ice-Mountain

  XXXIX: The Enlightenment of Oln Woeck

  XL: In the Palace of the Sun

  XLI: Spire of Dreamers

  XLII: The Tree of Might-Be

  XLIII: Resonance

  XLIV: Bribery

  XLV: The Spy

  SURA THE SEVENTH: 1420 A.H.— The Hollow-Handled Knife

  XLVI: The Bride of God

  XLVIII: Flowery Death

  THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE

  L. Neil Smith

  Phoenix Pick

  An Imprint of Arc Manor

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  The Crystal Empire copyright © 1986, 2010 L. Neil Smith. All rights reserved. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Cover copyright © 2009 Arc Manor, LLC. Manufactured in the United States of America.

  Tarikian, TARK Classic Fiction, Arc Manor, Arc Manor Classic Reprints, Phoenix Pick, Phoenix Rider, Manor Thrift and logos associated with those imprints are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arc Manor Publishers, Rockville, Maryland. All other trademarks and trademarked names are properties of their respective owners.

  This book is presented as is, without any warranties (implied or otherwise) as to the accuracy of the production, text or translation.

  ISBN (Digital Edition): 978-1-60450-467-5

  ISBN (Paper Edition): 978-1-60450-452-1

  www.PhoenixPick.com

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  Published by Phoenix Pick

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  www.ArcManor.com

  *****

  The phrase in Chapter XXIII, “The Sword of God”, is

  used with the consent of my friend, colleague, and

  so-far-unindicted co-conspirator, J. Neil Schulman.

  *****

  FOR PHILIP B. SULLIVAN,

  wherever you are

  *****

  Contents

  PROLOGUE: a.d. 1349 The Rat Crusade

  SURA THE FIRST: 1395-1400 A.H. The Land-Ship

  I: Young Sedrich

  II: Mistress of the Sisterhood

  III: The Cult

  IV: Frae Hethristochter

  V: Murderer

  VI: The Twisted Sails

  VII: The Sacred Heart

  VIII: The Fiery Cross

  IX: Fire-Tithe

  SURA THE SECOND: 1410-1418 A.H. The Agreement of Islam

  X: Ayesha

  XI: Rumors of War

  XII: Mochamet al Rotshild

  XIII: The Artichoke

  XIV: A Suitable Token

  XV: By Arrangement of the Caliph

  XVI: A Party of Every Section

  SURA THE THIRD: 1420 A.H.— Sedrich Fireclaw

  XVII: The Silver Chest131

  XVIII: The Pillar of Fire

  XIX: The Ship of the Desert

  XX: The Botherhood of Man

  XXI: Delicate Negotiations

  XXII: Owald

  XXIII: The Sword of God

  XXIV: Knife Thrower

  SURA THE FOURTH: 1420 A.H.— The Voyageurs

  XXV: The Great Blue Mountains

  XXVI: Traveling Short Bear

  XXVII: Smoke Upon the Wind

  XXVIII: Factions of the Ancients

  XXIX: Blood-Haze

  XXX: Lishabha

  XXXI: The Aspen Grove

  XXXII: The Breath of God

  SURA THE FIFTH: 1420 A.H.— The Saw-Toothed Sword

  XXXIII: The Copper-Kilts

  XXXIV: Imperial Captive

  XXXV: Audience with the Sun

  XXXVI: Ship of the Cloud-Tops

  XXXVII: The Wanderer

  SURA THE SIXTH: 1420 A.H.— The Crystal Empire

  XXXVIII: The Ice-Mountain

  XXXIX: The Enlightenment of Oln Woeck

  XL: In the Palace of the Sun

  XLI: Spire of Dreamers

  XLII: The Tree of Might-Be

  XLIII: Resonance

  XLIV: Bribery

  XLV: The Spy

  SURA THE SEVENTH: 1420 A.H.— The Hollow-Handled Knife

  XLVI: The Bride of God

  XLVII: The Blinded Eye

  XLVIII: Flowery Death

  *********

  PROLOGUE: a.d. 1349 - The Rat Crusade

  “And he that owneth the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, it seemeth to me there is as it were a plague in the house. Then the priest shall command that they empty the house...that all that is in the house be not made unclean....And he shall cause the house to be scraped within round about, and they shall pour out the dust...into an unclean place.”—Leviticus 14:35-41

  They obliged the carpenters to watch.

  Gathering his robe against the January cold, Wilhelm of Glarus was likewise an unwilling witness, the prisoner of his own eyes. They refused to tear themselves from the fine new house—a remarkable, windowless structure of two stories’ height—standing, daubed with pitch instead of plaster and unpainted, upon a rocky islet where the Rhine bent itself toward the faraway ocean. Neither were the scraps and shavery of its making cleared away, instead being swept beneath its open foundation, augmented with many a wicker basket of forest-gathered kindling.

  Snowflakes, impelled by savage, pine-laden gusts, stung exposed flesh. Wilhelm’s rough-woven garment afforded scant protection. Yet the marktplatz above the river over
ran with a multitude little better clothed, under no such compulsion as the house-carpenters suffered—save, perhaps, of the variety that tormented Wilhelm.

  Before the Rathaus, which dominated the wind-drifted square, city fathers, arrayed in heavy furs and ornate necklaces, nodded. A ring-mailed officer shouted; armsmen lowered long-shafted pikes, shepherding a clot of shivering, bedraggled forms—not members of the waiting throng—toward the century-old stone bridge. The bridge was the city’s proudest achievement, the first in history to span the Rhine.

  The community of Basle’s unbelievers would this day make penitence for the Great Mortality.

  Even as a third part of the town’s inhabitants—indeed, a third of all Christendom—were being thrown into shallow common trenches, warning had arrived from Savoy, in the form of confessions extracted by torture. Messengers from Toledo, the tale was told, bore poison in little leather packets for sprinkling in the wells and springs of Europe. In the Rathaus, a decree was passed forbidding Jews to settle in the town for two hundred years. The problem, it was understood, was what to do with those hundreds whose fathers had been born here, who possessed shops, tools, property—and a wealth of gold and silver.

  Wilhelm shuddered. He was a small man, of fragile build, with awkward hands and feet, a narrow, bony chest. His pale blue eyes, watering in the cold, were set too close beside the prominence of his nose. Yet there was kindness in them, wisdom beyond his twenty-three years. Almost he regretted his tonsure, which hadn’t been required of him absolutely. His head ached where the freezing wind rasped across his shaven scalp.

  In Avignon, Pope Clement VI, in the sternest of promulgations, had forbidden, upon pain of excommunication, measures like the one this moment transpiring before the young priest’s horrified eyes. Still, Clement was just one Pope of two, and Avignon further away than the ocean.

  The march across the ancient span began.

  It was difficult to stand against the merciless wind, which roared unimpeded along the water, without leaning into it. The cold was terrible, the armsmen ungentle. Yet only the children cried as pike-points pricked them, as frozen stone cut unshod feet. Their mothers made to quiet them, but it was effort wasted.

  Reaching a point where rough siege ladders slanted against the footings, they were compelled to climb in their hundreds onto the barren surface of the island. Several lost their grip upon the crude-lashed poles, falling to the cruel rock. The armsmen forced the living to drag the shattered dead until they came to the house, into which, by pairs and dozens, many were already crowded. When it was full, and none save armsmen and a single carpenter stood visible upon the rock, that unlucky artisan raised his hammer and let it fall, again and again, nailing the one door shut.

  Some armsmen had brought torches, wind-whipped and showering sparks against the pitch-daubed windowless walls. These they thrust beneath the foundation, amidst the scraps and kindling. The house caught, flame lashing out and upward. Even across this distance, and the river, Wilhelm could feel the heat of it upon his face.

  More than the wind was moaning now. He could hear the victims calling upon their god. Their prayers sounded distressingly like his own (and were received with the same divine indifference). Noise—the shrilling sound of hundreds of trapped men, frightened women, helpless children, screaming out their last breath as muscles shriveled, twisted, hair singed into glowing beads upon their scalps, burning its way to the bone, their very eyes bursting in the furnace—

  2

  “Willi! Willi!”

  Rough hands shook his shoulders. Drenched with foul-smelling sweat and a fatigue untouched by stolen sleep, Wilhelm sat up on a narrow pallet, propping his elbows beneath him. He blinked—standing over him was an armsman, like the ones who had...but that had been a year ago, he realized with returning consciousness. He’d been suffering again through one of his recurring nightmares.

  This wasn’t his familiar cell, but a broad, high-ceilinged chamber which in the daytime would fill with light from arch-topped many-colored windows. At present they tossed back scattered shards of candlelight, absorbed by the amorphous writhing forms which covered the flagging of the minster nave. The place reeked of burnt tallow, fevered bodies, incense, and death. To think how he’d complained within himself when it had merely smelled of mildew!

  Weight settled upon his chest. These lumps were people, his parishioners, now Father Albert was gone. Sounds of doomed souls suffering and dying filled his every waking hour, as well as every moment of his sleep. Yet there was naught he could do for the still-living whose plague-racked bodies surrounded him, crowding the ancient church. He had tried. Having fallen at last into a guilty and exhausted sleep, during frantic attempts to comfort victims of this freshened onslaught of the Mortality, he admitted to himself that his limited strength would have been best spent attempting to dispose of the mounting dead.

  There was a cough.

  He looked up at the travel-stained warrior who’d awakened him. “What wish you of me, soldier?”

  The nightmare had evaporated, giving way to the horror of reality. Still, this was no faceless, obedient murderer. He knew this man, and well. Despite their mutual weariness, each afforded the other a grin.

  “By the good God, Willi, I’ve ground five horses into butcher-bait getting here. You’d damned well better recognize me!”

  “Profaning in a sanctuary,” answered Wilhelm, shaking his head. “So this is what has become of my big brother Emil. Like every young Swiss youth he longed to go away from his native Glarus years ago, questing for wealth and glory. Unlike most, he managed to accomplish it—the leaving, anyway. Now he is a mercenary, spreading death and destruction in a world already overflowing with it.”

  Wilhelm wasn’t certain whether he spoke in seriousness or in jest. He was too tired to decide.

  Pulling a soiled helmet-coif over his sweaty head, Emil responded, “For the moment, good friar, I’m a simple messenger—though ’tis mine to wonder what’s become of my little brother. ’Twould seem I’ve been sent here, bearing personal regards—for him alone—from none other than the Pope in Avignon. Nor shall he—Willi, not the Pope—receive the least syllable of them till he explains—to the head of his family, I might add—how such a thing can come to pass!”

  It was an old joke between them. Emil was elder by less than a year. Their father had died before the younger brother had been born, his death a gangrenous agony from a woodcutter’s accident.

  With great effort, Wilhelm climbed to his feet, muscles stiff not so much from overuse as from months of working their owner’s will against a steady burden of futility. He felt terrible. Nor, despite deepest wishes to the contrary, could he keep from examining himself, minute to minute, tongue, throat, armpits, and groin, for the signs of incipient disease. He supposed it was more commendable than fleeing to a country villa, refusing, as many priests and doctors were doing elsewhere, to enter the presence of victims of the Mortality.

  Emil at his side, he left the cavernous nave, at last finding a quiet alcove. Here they could talk.

  Unlike his brother, Emil was a big man, hardened by combat, his height and breadth exaggerated by soldier’s trappings. Bits and pieces of the uniform Wilhelm recognized as French. A scabbarded two-handed sword—another sacrilege in this place—slapped at Emil’s thigh. A crescent-guarded basilard, insignia of the Swiss mercenary, spanned the small of his back.

  He was dirty; also, he smelled of the last animal he’d ridden to death getting here.

  The monk was too exhausted for much curiosity about the message from Clement VI, too exhausted to explain it had been unexpected only in its means of being delivered. But he was too exhausted for many of the things which each day he’d accomplished nonetheless.

  Relating to his brother the events upon the island in the Rhine, he complained, “I was cursed, Emil! Although I prayed for no more than to be a humble servant to my God, I was burdened with a selfish lust to know. I returned from the fire with two strange notio
ns. The first was that the Great Mortality represented neither the curse of God upon Man, nor a Jewish ‘well-poisoning’ plot against Christians, but a natural affliction of some kind.

  “The second was that there ought to be some way to prove it.”

  3

  Old Father Albert had never uttered a word of protest. He, too, had been horrified by the mass incineration of the canton’s Jews, against the specific injunction of the Holy Father.

  In the next days, Wilhelm spent much time meditating upon the Mortality. The boys’ mother had always hated rats, believing them a source of illness and corruption. It was, at the least, a place to begin. Wilhelm resolved to put his mother’s belief to trial.

  With the greatest imaginable pains, he caused the minster to be sealed, flushing the cellars with fire and water, following in the wainscoting with vinegar and pungent incenses, bribing small boys to maintain a constant vigilance against the rodents, killing a few which had escaped the purge—the many which chewed their way back in—with their little crossbows, burning the remains without touching them.

  The building was scoured after each Mass. During this time, not one soul who resided upon the minster site—other friars, the sexton’s family, servants and retainers—was afflicted.

  Realizing some would claim it was the holiness of the church which protected its inhabitants, he persuaded others in the town—some few who suffered the same pangs of conscience he and Father Albert did—to repeat the prophylaxis upon their own houses, quoting Scripture where plain argument failed. The results, save those whose occupations took them into buildings unprotected, were the same as at the minster.

  With the approval of his abbot, he wrote a letter to the Holy Father in Avignon. The reply Wilhelm received exceeded his most sanguine expectations. Having tried in vain to stem the tide of anti-Jewish sentiment himself, Clement was overjoyed to receive Wilhelm’s suggestion that, whatever its unknown fundamental nature, the Mortality was transmitted neither by Jews nor evil spirits, but somehow by rats.

  By that time, Wilhelm, suspecting fleas rather than the rodents who carried them—“And he that is to be cleansed...shall shave all his hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair he shall shave off, and he shall wash his clothes, also he shall wash his flesh in water, and he shall be clean”—had begun to devise experiments afresh.