The Crystal Empire Read online

  4

  “Our mother is dead, Willi, three weeks since. The house lies empty, the door swinging upon a single hinge.”

  Emil coughed again, spat upon the floor.

  “This sheds some light upon one mystery, at least.” He rubbed his temple. “Not much. Willi, I was instructed by the Pope himself to tell you a peculiar story of my own.”

  The corridor of which their alcove was a part was still in darkness. At its ends, however, Wilhelm discerned the light of the coming dawn. Together, they rose and walked, coming to an unglazed window which overlooked the flagstones of a parapet-walk below, and, past it, the valley of the Rhine.

  The air was clean and cold. Wilhelm needed it.

  Almost a year had gone by since the fire, since the nightmare began coming. He’d labored toward its exorcism, yet still it came. Perhaps it always would.

  But perhaps what Emil had to say might banish it.

  “A private army—of which your big brother happened to be part—was called upon July last to ring the wicked port of Marseilles. D’you know where that is? You do? You surprise me with your worldliness, little brother. Anyway, we marched inward with great clamor, beating weapons upon shields, with the object of driving rats, hundreds of ’em, thousands, numbers which I in my ignorance don’t know how to name, through cunning wicker chutes into the hold of an ancient-hulled old tub at the quayside.”

  He leaned out the window to spit.

  “We were paid off and dispersed, but some time afterward your Clement requested of our captains lists of men among the Free Companies at Marseilles who were from Switzerland, in particular Basle or Glarus.

  “There was I, of course, and here I am.”

  Lifting his leg with an effort, he tucked thumb and forefinger into an age-darkened boot-top, levering out a folded scrap of soiled parchment.

  “I can attest,” he told his brother, “this is a letter from Clement, for he wrote it as I stood before him, there, ’twixt those great blasted braziers he keeps going day and night to fend off the plague. He gave it thus into my hand to give to you.

  “Here it is.”

  There was no signature, no salutation. Wilhelm recognized the writing:

  I eschew certain proprieties, valued friend, with an intention to preserve the sanctity of our converse from prying eyes—also, as you’ll see, your esteemed person. My messenger will relate a tale of the Marseilles “campaign.” Others of my court discerned in your inquiries the opportunity of accomplishing what no Crusade has.

  The vessel, I’ve determined by distasteful methods, was crewed with convicts who’d survived the Pest and were thought immune. Its destination was the Saracen shore, the object to bring the Pest upon the people there. The vessel itself was no great loss, a derelict, its keel full of Cornish ballast, the detritus of ages in the tin trade.

  Yet, once put to sea, in some mysterious fashion the character of the Pest malevolently altered. Each soul aboard perished in the most horrible manner—I’ve seen their dead faces. Storm-driven, the death-ship fetched up on the Genoese coast, its nonhuman passengers escaping to sow new terror which we suffer in increased numbers.

  Wilhelm paused.

  Before this evil intervention, the Mortality, what Clement called “the Pest,” had been slaying between a third part and half of the population. Sometimes it seemed that rats and fleas had naught to do with it, that one could breathe it in and die before the victim one took it from. There were rumors of calamity from Iceland to the farthest eastern reaches of the known world.

  Wilhelm, struggling now to save a pitiable handful of villagers, knew the New Death, unlike the old, was killing horses, cattle, even housecats, emptying the land.

  I’ve excommunicated the instigators [Clement continued], cursing their souls to eternal damnation. Too late it is to prevent the perversion of your discoveries, my son, but from what I believe to be my deathbed I’ve ordained publication of our correspondence, of the truth concerning the attempted extermination, not of the Saracens alone, but of Christendom, of the known world, and beyond.

  The universe we know disintegrates about us. Those “Crusaders” beyond my reach spin superstitious fantasies that such things as the use of clockworks, waterwheels, and gunpowder are responsible for the raging Pestilence. Every manner of tale is being placed in currency to oppose the truth. Of those who still care, many prefer the lies.

  I caution you, friend, against the possibilities of assassination. Those there are who wouldn’t have their story contradicted. They may have followed my messenger to you, but I believed it important you hear the truth from me.

  “Know you the contents of this letter, Emil?” Wilhelm asked after he had read it through twice.

  Looking up as if just awakened, his brother shook his head. “When have I’d time to learn reading? What’s it say—or ought I ask?”

  Wilhelm read the letter to his brother, the grim expression on his face soon matched by strain upon Emil’s countenance.

  “If this be true,” the friar mused, “it would explain why so many more are afflicted than was the case ere now.”

  Emil coughed. “The land’s passing empty, Willi, ’tween Avignon and this place, with naught but ragged penitents whipping themselves from town to town.”

  Wilhelm frowned. Flagellants appeared everywhere, trying to expiate the sin of all mankind—and perhaps the Mortality itself—through self-mortification. Authorities considered it heresy, an attempt at direct intercession, rather than through offices of the Church.

  “In truth,” Emil continued, “Basle’s well off by comparison. ’Tis as if an invisible army’s murdered all of Christendom. The world’s dying. ’Tis the end.”

  Wilhelm shook his head. “Yet the world began once with a single man and woman. If a single man and woman should survive, my brother, it can begin again, can it not?”

  The soldier pushed away from the window.

  “Don’t speak to me of such things, brother. I left a woman—did you know I’d married?—I left Jeannette to do this errand for your Pope. I don’t know whether she or our two small children yet live. Knowing’s more important than you can imagine.”

  Wilhelm placed a hand upon his brother’s shoulder. “I did not know that you had married.” He shook his head. “But I am a man, am I not? Though I be bound by vows of celibacy, I can imagine—”

  “No, Wilhelm, you can’t.” Steadying himself against the window casement, Emil looked into his brother’s eyes. “You see, I’m hoping—for I’ll no longer pray—that they’re safely dead!”

  Wilhelm stepped backward, aghast. “May god forgive you, Emil! Why?”

  “Because”—Emil peered up the corridor and down, left hand reaching for the crescent pommel of his basilard—“your friend Clement’s correct. ’Twas a near thing, my making it here. An assassin’s indeed come with the intention of silencing you.

  “God be damned!”

  In a single fluid motion, Emil thrust his broad-bladed dagger upward, to the bar-guard, through the arch of his brother’s lower jaw. Wilhelm was almost relieved when the blow fell.

  Emil spoke to one who could no longer hear him. “You see, Willi, ’twas his own messenger, this assassin. Jeannette and our babies’re prisoners of his enemies, threatened with torture.”

  Tears streaming down his face, Emil gave one more cough, spat blackened blood.

  He fell across his brother’s body and was still.

  It was the last Year of Our Lord, 1349.

  SURA THE FIRST: 1395-1400 A.H.

  The Land-Ship

  **

  “...so let those who go against His command beware,

  lest a trial befall them....”—The Holy Koran, Sura XXIV, Light

  I: Young Sedrich

  “Prosperous are the believers who in their prayers are humble...and who preserve their trusts and their covenant....Those are the inheritors....”

  —The Koran, Sura XXIII

  "I won’t!”

  The boy
stood half inside the rowboat, one bare foot within the green translucent hull, the other on the dampened planking where the little craft lay canted. Scattered about him on the dock were his father’s tools. Like a quarterstaff clutched in his hands—one anchored at his left hip, the other outthrust before him—he wielded the long sculling oar he’d hoped his idea might make unnecessary.

  The still air smelled rich with salt and iodine, the spicy stench of marine decay. The sun was hot, for a summer morning with the dew just off the sparse sand grass. Skipping from unrippled water, it assaulted unprotected eyes. The boy’s fair skin was reddened by it, lightly blistered and peeling, as seemed natural to him.

  Better than the fish-belly pallor of this foul-odored old man who confronted him.

  Answer there came, crack-voiced and wheedling: “Here, boy, stay thy hand! Too young thou art to pay the penalty thou beg’st for!”

  The speaker was an undersized, wizened individual, his bony figure draped in unbleached fabric. His narrow-crested skull, with its ink-and-needle imprints at the temples, was scraped smooth. Where his simple garment left a shoulder bare, a crosshatch of ancient scars offended the eye. Two others, likewise swathed, tattooed, and shaven, stood behind him. They were younger, differing in their greater bulk—as well as in the lesser number of their scars.

  Their leader leaned forward, stretched out a ropy-veined hand. “Give me that oar!”

  Overhead a gull wheeled, mocking them both with its squeals.

  Sedrich Sedrichsohn was big for a boy of eleven. He complied with the order—after his own fashion—thrusting the blade-edge into his tormentor’s solar plexus. Making retching noises, the small man folded, staggering backward, his hands clutched over the insulted portion of his anatomy.

  The man’s companions each took a threatening step forward.

  Sedrich recovered from the thrust, assumed a firmer stance straddling the gunwale.

  He let the oar whistle in a defiant circle over his head.

  They stopped.

  Still doubled, the man looked up, hatred burning in his yellow eyes. “Why,” he gasped, “you young—”

  Behind them, heavy footsteps vibrated through the pier.

  “What in the name of Exile d’you think you’re about, Oln Woeck?”

  It was a rich, rasping bass which interrupted them, followed by the whispery ring of hammered steel leaving a brass throat. Making more noise with his moccasin-shod feet than necessary, a giant form strode past the corner of the village boatshed. The wolfhide shoulder band of an empty half-scabbard crossed his shaggy chest.

  From one huge fist he swung a length of polished metal, high as a tall man’s breastbone, broad as a big man’s hand, sharp-edged as an old man’s memories of yesterday.

  Beside him trotted a pair of huge black curly-pelted dogs.

  Scar-backed Oln Woeck straightened with visible effort.

  “I greet thee, Sedrich Owaldsohn, renowned slayer of Red Men, and thy greatsword Murderer. This contraption of thy son’s devising”—he indicated the boat, upon which young Sedrich had begun to work some alterations—“is forbidden by the mandate of His suffering.”

  Ignoring the formal salutation, Old Sedrich ran a free hand through his curly gray-blond mane, where a pair of eagle feathers, bound at their bases with bright thread, replaced the warrior’s braid he’d once worn. His nose was a great sunburned hook, his eyes the color of the frozen hearts of icebergs which sometimes passed this coastline in the springtime.

  They flared, now, at the robe-draped man.

  “What pigshit nonsense is this, skinny one?”

  Like his younger namesake, he wore only a leather breechclout with matching vest, the latter decorated with buttons fashioned from the points of deer horn.

  “Forbidden? Tell me where you see its fire-burning machinery, Oln Woeck!”

  Both canines sat, tongues lolling, their faces curiously intelligent and ironic. Keeping a wary eye on the animals, as well as the end of Sedrich’s makeshift weapon. Oln Woeck stepped toward the boat.

  He pointed at a black iron shaft which lay among the clutter of tools and parts.

  “This was fashioned in thy forge, was it not, blacksmith, by fire?”

  Owaldsohn laughed. “As well you know! Each moon-quarter I pay fire-tithe for the privilege! You ignorant dung-ball, there’s no more forbidden art in this thing than’s to be discovered in a cart-axle!”

  He slammed the greatsword back into its half-scabbard, a gesture more intimidating than its unsheathing.

  One of the dogs gave a good-natured bark.

  “Be hush, Willi! Leave the boy to his tinkering, Oln Woeck—or, by my forge, you’ll pay a tithe, in bone and blood!”

  “How darest thou speak to me thus!”

  Oln Woeck’s face flushed red, veins standing out upon his forehead. Foam formed upon his lips, whence sprayed small gobbets.

  “I care not a whit that this be no combustible machine,” he spat. “Ask the boy thyself, Owaldsohn—what is it for, boy, what purpose doth it serve?”

  Still braced, Sedrich looked down at the boat, perplexity wrinkling his features. Across the gunwales stretched the iron bar which seemed to be the focus of the older man’s objections, bent at right angles in four places to produce a two-handed crank. Where it passed outboard, at the previous locations of the rowlocks, small wooden paddle wheels of four blades each were attached.

  “Why, no more than to make the rowing easier, Oln Woeck.”

  The old man grinned as if this were a confession, looking back over his disfigured shoulder at his companions, then at Owaldsohn.

  “And why should rowing be made easier, young Sedrich?”

  Perplexity turned to exasperation.

  “So more can be accomplished in a given time, that the livelihood of fisherfolk—”

  Oln Woeck stamped a callused, naked foot.

  “Thou’st no calling to make life easier, impious brat! ’Tis the purpose of our lives to ease His suffering in Hell, by sharing it with Him on this earth!”

  “So you say, priest!” the boy retorted.

  One of the great hounds growled.

  The three robed figures stepped backward, mouths agape, eyes widened at the insult.

  “This new idea is mine, old man, not yours to dispose of!” the boy continued. “Before I let you interfere, I’ll smash this boat and burn the splinters!”

  Oln Woeck eyed first the fearsome father, then the brace of war-dogs, then the boy. He peered down at the rowboat with its half-finished innovations.

  “Thy new idea, eh? What makest thee think we want new ideas? ’Tis new ideas’ve brought on every calamity a sinful mankind’s suffered for a thousand years!”

  Wry humor danced in Sedrich’s eyes, the image of his father’s.

  “All the better to ‘ease the suffering’ of your precious...”

  The boy let it end there, feeling he had gone too far.

  Indeed, the word “blasphemy” had begun to form upon Oln Woeck’s lips, but he silenced it.

  A calculating look appeared in the old man’s yellow eyes.

  “Tell me, boy, who first thought of rowboats? Who first thought of iron cranks? Who first thought of thee? This idea of thine resteth upon the inventions of others. It belongeth to the community who made boats and iron and thyself.

  “Destroy it, thou committest theft, since thou’ve invented naught!”

  Once again the boy was puzzled. He remembered well conceiving of the idea, persuading his father to help him with it at the forge, testing it for the first time across a barrel in the shop.

  Unable to answer, he let the oar drop, until its blade-end rested on the pier.

  Owaldsohn laughed, thrusting Oln Woeck’s companions aside. Dogs trotting behind him, he covered the distance between him and his son in an easy stride. Bending, he took hold of the paddle-crank at its center, strained, and, iron straps and nails flying, wrenched it from its attachments to the gunwale. Straightening, he gave it a casual
toss.

  It sailed far out upon the mirror-surfaced estuary and disappeared with a splash.

  “Now,” the big man declared, “Sedrich’s dangerous idea’s gone forever from your ‘community.’

  “Gather up the tools, boy—if we’ve your permission, Oln Woeck. Willi! Klem! Let’s be going.”

  As he followed his father’s instructions, the boy watched Oln Woeck’s hands clenching into fists, the veins of his forehead threatening to explode. The boy knew what was going on in his mind. Sedrich Owaldsohn was a hero of the western wars, a pillar of the community. He was even famous for a new idea of his own—folding two grades of steel under the hammer to create a sword unequaled elsewhere in the New World.

  They daren’t make trouble with him.

  At present.

  As the two Sedrichs left the end of the dock, setting foot on solid turf, Owaldsohn laid a gentle hand upon his son’s shoulder.

  “You did well with that sculling oar. You’ve learned the lesson well, that aught about you is a weapon.

  “Howe’er...”

  “Yes, Father?”

  The older man ruffled the boy’s dark hair, bleached at the ends by exposure to sea and sun.

  “If that muttonhead upon Master Thee-thou’s right hand had brought his wits with him, you’d be fishbait. Children’re too rare and valuable to waste by neglecting their instruction. And you’re too right-handed. You must put some work into your off-side.”

  Sedrich grinned up at the shaggy giant. “Yes, Father.”

  There was a long pause. “Father, about my idea being lost...”

  Owaldsohn growled. “I’ll speak a word with Hethri Parcifal. A good idea’s rare and valuable, too. The village won’t permit the Cult to have its way in this.”

  “’Tis all right, Father.” The boy smiled craftily. “I needs must start all o’er again, anyway.”

  The big man stopped, stared at his son, a puzzled expression on his broad, bearded face.