Shroud of Shadow (37 page)

The blatant failure made Natil bow her head. Helping and healing. What help or healing had she given Omelda? But she struggled on. The helping and healing would come again. She had so determined, she had so willed.

Abruptly, Omelda fell silent, her struggles ceased. Natil, startled and worried, eased her down to the ground near the waterless fountain in the middle of the town square.

Omelda was staring up at her, or perhaps beyond her, eyes wide and hectic. But her words were clear, distinct. “It's no use.”

Hands to her face, Natil sagged to the pavement beside her.

“I'm dead.”

The harper shook her head. “We can find help, Omelda. There are a few good men in Furze. Paul Drego will remember me. He will help us.”

“They're all devils.”

“Omelda, please—”

The apostate nun's voice suddenly rose, and her fists, pink and damp with the flush of fever that had possessed her utterly, clenched. “They're all devils! I'm telling you! I know! I know! From the beginning, I knew! They tossed me into the convent, then their damned religion tossed me out! And then they tied me up, and fucked me, and branded me with red hot brands!”

Natil turned to a passerby, a woman she recognized as the convicted heretic she had met before. “Some water, madam,” she said. “Please.”

The woman recoiled as though from a serpent, her hands pressed to the doubles crosses on her cloak. “God bless you!” she cried. “God bless you! Stay away from me! I'm no heretic! God bless you!”

“Please, sir,” said Natil, trying another, a common laborer by the look of him, “some water for a sick woman.”

But he gave her no water. He merely watched, watched and listened as Omelda continued to rave:

“You're not men. You're not priests. You're all devils. God looks down from the sky, and He sees you all. He knows what I am, and He knows what you are!”

Natil found that she and Omelda were alone in a tiny zone of quarantine in the middle of the square, a zone bounded by turned backs, averted faces . . . and, occasionally, bright eyes, open ears.

“We're all alone! I'm alone, and they tied me up. And look! Look! Look! There's His face! Leaning down out of the sky!”

More bright eyes. Natil took Omelda in her arms, tried to speak soothingly, tried to remember how it had felt to be an Elf, what it had been like to have a voice that could comfort, a touch that could heal. It had been so once. She was determined that it would be so again. She had been an Elf. She would be an Elf.

Omelda flailed once more and then collapsed, her strength spent. Natil bent over her, searched her face. She was still breathing.

But when the harper looked up, she saw soldiers in the livery of David a'Freux standing around her, pikes leveled. A gaunt Dominican was among them, and he nodded to their captain.

There was no escape.

***

Siegfried's forehead was pressed against his clenched fists, and he was unaware and heedless of the morning light that streamed in through the window like grace spilled from a bright chalice. He was looking within, trying to find in his darkness a glimpse of real light, a flicker of inbreaking divinity.

Adoro te devote, latens deitas . . .

Yes, he adored the hidden God who so shrouded himself within the shadowy manifestations of bread and wine. Bread and wine had, indeed, passed through the Savior's hands, and His benediction had forever infused those sacramental commonplaces with the deepest holiness. But Siegfried wanted more. He wanted to see. He wanted to be
sure
.

Tormented as he was by his recent descent into untruths, though, he now despaired of ever seeing, of ever being sure. God, far from drawing closer as a result of Siegfried's sacrifice of his own veracity, now appeared even more distant; and the Inquisitor's soul was dark with lies and obsessions about lies.

Surely his ambition could not be at fault: he had thrown away the evidence against Paul Drego only to further his pursuit of a greater quarry. Money and power and influence could draw many souls into the fiery embrace of hell, and if men like Paul Drego were bad, then men like Jacob Aldernacht were certainly worse. Infinitely worse. So much worse that they were worth whatever work, effort, self-denial or sleepless nights it took to arrest them, try them, and burn them.

But were they worth a lie?

Siegfried opened his eyes. On the table before him was the order for condemnation and confiscation. It was all according to form, all in order. It only wanted the date.

But it was founded upon a lie. Oh, Harold's testimony was adequate, and more than adequate. But before Harold's testimony about Jacob there had been a book of evidence. A book about Paul Drego. A book that Siegfried had discarded . . . without cause.

He lifted his head. The sunlight still streamed in through the window, and from this high office in the House of God, the Inquisitor could see the tumbled and impoverished houses of Furze. Dusty streets. Poor people.

But he could see beyond the town, too. He could see green pastures and the sparkle of the Malvern River. He could see the distant forest, dark green with summer leaves, fertile as a fresh-turned field. And beyond the forest rose the Aleser Mountains, their lower slopes green with crops and steadings and stands of trees, their upper peaks white with snow that defied the best that the hot season could send against them.

It is summer
, he thought. And for a moment, Siegfried began to grasp the real meaning of that statement. It was lovely. Green. Pliant with new growth. Everything that he saw was simple, contained, a truth unto itself.

Truth.

He bent his head again, his lies a weight within him, a hard knot of conscience just below his heart. Was even Jacob Aldernacht worth a lie? The season said no. The mountains and the forest said no. The pent innocence of his soul said no.

He lifted his head again, struck. His Master had given him ten talents, and he had, by his lie, simply buried them in a field, hoping that a flat return of the investment—without a shred of interest—would satisfy the Lender.

But Siegfried knew that it would not satisfy Him. And he knew now what he had to do. He had to give up the lie. He had to turn again to a life without sin, a life of innocence. He had to—

A tapping at the door. Giovanni entered, bowed. His movements were quick, almost furtive, and when he straightened, there was a deep crease between his eyebrows. “Brother Siegfried,” he said, “we've taken a prisoner. Well . . . actually, we've taken two prisoners, but one is . . . extremely odd.”

Still looking at the mountains, Siegfried nodded absently. Yes, he would give up the lie. And if that meant beginning the entire investigation over again, then that was what he would do. He had already restarted it once for the sake of a lie. He could certainly restart it again for the sake of the truth. “Odd?”

“Well,” said Giovanni, “they're both strangers in town. And one is too sick to really bother with. I expect she'll die within a few days. The odd one, though . . . well, I can't make any sense out of the answers she's giving me.”

Siegfried came out of his reverie. “Sense? Surely, Fra Giovanni, you have dealt with recalcitrant defendants before. Give her to David's men. Tell them what to do. You will get sense out of her, I assure you.”

“It's not that . . .” Giovanni hesitated. The crease between his eyebrows deepened. “Could you talk to her? I'm afraid that this is beyond me.”

“What is the problem?”

“Well, to begin with, she claims that she is not a Christian, and that therefore she cannot be a heretic. She also claims that she has talked to you before, and says that she wishes you . . . uh . . .” Giovanni shook his head. “. . . that she wishes you well. She simply doesn't make sense.”

“Talked to me before? Who is this woman? What's her name?”

“She calls herself Natil. She's a harper.”

Siegfried was on his feet in a moment. “Natil? Jacob Aldernacht's harper? Dear God, Giovanni! Grace has been bestowed upon us!”

Giovanni stared at him. “But I can't—”

“I will question her.” Siegfried grabbed the order for Jacob's condemnation, rolled it up, shoved it into his sleeve. “I will question her immediately. This morning.” The thought was hammering in his head: he had the key to Jacob's heresy in the House of God at this very moment. Perhaps, for the sake of the truth, he would have to start over, but the path to his goal would be short and direct, for it would lead through the testimony—and, if necessary, the body—of Natil the harper.

***

They had taken her harp, taken most of her clothing, taken all of her freedom.

Natil was in chains, suspended by her wrists in darkness. The cell was dry, and she had not been tortured, but knee-deep water and deliberately inflicted pain, she was sure, would come later, as would, eventually, burning.

How many of her kindred, she wondered, had hung in chains like this, listened to the distant screams and the drip of water, waited to see the steel instruments of torture and the scarlet rawness of compound fractures? Many. Thousands. Millions. The Elves had died hunted, and they had died broken, and they had died burned. And now Natil, the last, had followed her heritage not into the quiescent oblivion of fading but into the depths of the House of God.

She was in no pain. And, contrary to the intentions of those who had brought her to this place, she was not even afraid. Fear was applicable only to the unknown, and Natil knew without a doubt what lay ahead of her. If she felt anything at all, it was concern for Omelda, who was somewhere else in the prison, and sadness for herself, for all the Elves who would never again lift their hands to heal, for all those frail mortals who would never experience the grace of a sudden and unlooked-for resurgence of health or hear a voice of comfort.

She could do nothing about any of it, though. The Elves were gone, faded and killed, and Omelda was elsewhere, writhing in the delirium of a terminal fever. All Natil had was herself, and approaching death.

She sighed, rested her head against an arm, closed her eyes. Darkness confronted her, darkness as deep as that of this closed and lightless prison cell. Had she a single wish, she would have expended it upon that darkness: she would have wished for stars, wished that this last faltering Firstborn, so besmirched with humanity and the confusion of mortals, could once again see the illimitable light of that inner firmament. Let them rape her, torture her, burn her . . . just so long as she had the stars, just so long as she could—even in her last hour, even at her last moment—reforge that quintessential link with the people and the heritage she had, by act of will, reclaimed.

She felt a tear gather itself at the corner of her eye, run down her cheek.

Soon, she knew, they would come for her again. Fra Giovanni had met her answers to his elementary questions with disbelief and not a little confusion . . .

”Do you believe that the sacraments given by a priest in mortal sin are valid?”

“Sacraments, Fra Giovanni, come from within.”

“You believe this?”

“Beloved, I do not work from belief. I know.”

“You're a heretic, an enemy of the Holy Church.”

“I cannot be a heretic, Giovanni, for I am not a Christian.”

. . . and, bewildered, had sent her back to her cell, there to be afraid until she was called forth once again for questioning.

Fear. Her head was heavy against her arm, her tears still falling. So much fear among humans. Fear of life. Fear of love. Fear of death.

She sighed, found what was left of her voice. “I will die,” she whispered, “as I have lived. I will die an Elf. And I will answer these men as an Elf.” Her tears fell faster. “They will know me, my Lady, and they will know You. And if they wish to kill me for that, then so be it.”

And softly, then, very softly, in the darkness behind her closed eyes, something flickered, grew: a sudden and almost subliminal luminescence that burgeoned just beyond sight, surged forward toward sense, toward knowledge, toward vision. And then, in a hundred sparkling hues, a thousand degrees of brightness, the stars suddenly appeared, gleaming softly within her mind.

Natil sagged in her bonds, but the starlight upheld her. And when she opened her eyes, she discovered that her cell, dark as it was, appeared to her in shades of blue and lavender. And once again there was a lambent gleam about her flesh, a silvery aura invisible to mere mortals.

She found her voice again, and it was not in any of the tongues of men that she offered thanks to the Woman who had made her, but in the ancient language of the Elves. She remembered it, knew it as she now, once again, knew herself, and though the words came to her as though limned in fire, they were as the touch of water upon her lips. “
Telete, Marithae.
”

A clatter from the door answered her. Torchlight streamed in. She felt rough hands—the hands of men—on her. They unfastened her chains and dragged her into the corridor. Her foot caught on a stone step and she fell.

She felt the chains tighten. “Hold,” she said. There was an edge of immortality in her voice now, and the men obeyed instinctively. Slowly, unhindered, she got to her feet. “I will walk, gentlemen,” she said politely. “You need not drag me.”

And so baffled were they by her tone and by her innate nobility that they fell back and allowed her to tread the corridors of the House of God on her own feet, by her own will. The Elf held her head high, and there was a gleam, as of starlight, in her eyes.

The Aldernacht assault on Furze did not begin with cannon and siege machinery, with fireballs and heavy stones falling on the impoverished city. No, it began with small sacks of gold coins . . . falling into the hands of a few gate guards.

The men looked up at the band of Aldernacht soldiers, then down at the eloquently heavy sacks. Their leader cleared his throat. “Yes, your honor? Wha' can we do for you this morning?”

“I'm looking for a harper,” rasped Jacob. “Calls herself Natil. Tall. Dark hair with silver in it. She has a dumpy girl with her.”