The Book of Earth (45 page)

“What is he doing out there?” Köthen was irritable, as if von Alte was responsible for the existence of the priest as an obstacle in his life. Which in a way, he was.

Baron Josef looked faintly embarrassed. “Performing an exorcism.”

“Told you,” murmured Hal.

“But why is he
here?
”

“My lord Köthen, he came on the word of your messenger.”

“I sent him no messenger.”

“Then one who claimed to be your messenger. An old man with a limp. Looked like he’d just been in a fight.”

“Say again?” Hal came up beside him. “An old man? With a limp? Did he have a fresh gash on his cheek right here?”

“You describe him exactly. Perhaps he was your messenger, Weisstrasse?”

“Hardly.”

“But you know the man? He didn’t mention you.”

“Well, that’s something at least.”

Von Alte frowned at him suspiciously.

“I mean, I was mistaken. I only thought I knew him.”
Hal turned away with a stunned and sickly look. “Alas for the world. Treason is everywhere.” He wandered over to the nail keg that the lordling had pulled up for him moments ago. He sat down on it heavily and buried his head in his hands. Erde understood his anguish. You save someone’s life, or teach them everything they know, and still they betray you.

Köthen stared after Hal curiously, then returned his attention to von Alte. “What did this messenger say to bring Guillemo so quickly and so . . . noisily?”

“The usual. I only heard part of it. Something about the witch-woman and a dragon.” Josef chose this first opportunity of being alone with Köthen to make a play for his sympathy. “He’s obsessed, you know. You saw his reaction to your men’s dragon scare. He sees them under every rock. But there’s never any truth to it. My whole time with him has been one long chase after specters and will-o-the-wisps.”

“Then why do you stay with him if he’s such a burden?”

“Why do you welcome him into your town? My lord Köthen, our reasons are the same.”

“Why do either of you have anything to do with the man?” cried Hal from his nail keg. “He’s not just inconvenient, he’s unclean. Unclean! Filth spews from his mind and blasphemy from his mouth! He corrupts everything he touches!”

“Of course, Heinrich,” soothed Köthen reasonably. “We all know he’s mad, but the people believe in him. The man who brought you the message, von Alte, was he in earnest?”

“Oh, quite. The man was obviously terrified.”

“You see, my knight? The people want to be saved—from hunger, from disorder, and especially from dragons. You don’t understand this because if you see a disorder, you try to fix it yourself, and if you ever met a dragon, you’d welcome it into your library for closer study. But not everyone is so equal to the world. They want to be taken care of.”

Erde was sure Köthen was right. Though Old Ralf had been told that Earth had saved his life, he’d only pretended to accept the idea of him for as long as he considered himself at risk in the dragon’s presence. Once he was safely
out of range, the old fear and superstition went back to work on him. Either that, or he’d been a spy for the king’s enemies all along, but she thought the fact that he’d reported the dragon and not the King’s Knight proved it was abiding terror that had driven him to it. Of course, the result was the same in the long run.

Outside, the chanting ceased.

Her moment of grace had ended, her brief idyll while time stopped for politics and manly posturing among three men whose decency had been sorely tried, but who still retained their basic humanity. Outside, the real evil lurked, and it was coming in to join them. With Hal no longer standing between her and her father, Erde’s last illusion of safety evaporated. She burrowed deeper into the hay, hoping to back imperceptibly behind the feed bin.

When he appeared in the doorway, Erde recognized instantly that Brother Guillemo was no longer sane. Despite the biting cold, he wore his rough robe open to his waist, where the belt was cinched in so tightly that it left long red chafe marks on his belly. Snowflakes caught in the thick black hair matting his chest. His feet were also bare. The hard and blackened look of them suggested that he’d gone shoeless for quite a while. His hood was thrown back, revealing his bald head which, before, he had taken such trouble to conceal when not in one of his transports of prayer. But all this could have been detail for one more role, assumed like the others to fit his current purpose, except for the terror deep within his eyes. He looked like a man standing naked in a gale.

Erde wondered why it should be that she could read this man so truly, this one man whom she hated and feared above all others. She’d been able to from the moment she set eyes on him—even before, when in Tor Alte’s great-hall she’d seen through the lie of the white-robe claiming to be Guillemo Gotti. She felt connected to him in some awful, inexplicable way, and recalled Rose’s insistence with Hal about the priest’s real gift for prophecy. She wished she’d had more time to discuss it and its relationship to her own future, before she had to face him again.

But here he was, waiting just within the door frame, rocking slightly, as if getting his bearings, the one thing she
knew he would never quite have again. Köthen and von Alte moved instinctively to triangulate the priest, making Hal the third corner, unarmed though he was and with his head still buried in his hands. No one said a word. The lordling reached behind him for his horse’s reins and backed out of the barn, grateful to leave Guillemo to his superiors.

In the silence, Guillemo’s wild expression calmed a bit and became crafty. He glanced from von Alte to Köthen and back again. “Where is it? Is it here? Is it gone? Did it leave any sign?”

Köthen cleared his throat. “Do join us, Brother. What were you expecting to find?”

Guillemo squinted at him. “Ah. Then it’s gone. Again, I’m too late.”

“What is gone?”

“The witch’s minion. The Devil-beast your messenger spoke of.”

“Not my messenger, good Brother.”

“Not?” Guillemo frowned and looked to Josef von Alte, who shrugged defensively. The priest’s hands clenched, then brushed the air as if shooing flies. “Ah, I see it now. Some demon mocks me. I am being tested . . . no!” His restless movements stilled. He sniffed carefully and peered around into the shadows. “No, the dark clouds roil and gather. He was here. He’s gone now, but he will return for her. No. He’s here. I feel him near.” He paced in a small circle, taking in all corners of the barn. “I
feel
him.”

“He? Who?”

“The dragon, my lord baron.”

Köthen rolled his eyes, but Erde shivered. Was it possible? Could he actually sense the dragon’s presence, even when she couldn’t? She wouldn’t put it past him.

Guillemo walked his rapid little circle and halted in front of Hal. “Who’s this?” He grabbed the short-cropped nap at Hal’s temples and jerked his head back to see his face. Hal did not resist. He stared up at the priest with a vengeful death’s head grin. Guillemo stared back for a breathless second, then let go and sprang backward with a bone-chilling screech. His continued wails brought three of his brothers crowding to the door.

“Out!” Köthen snapped. “You, out! All of you! This is a gentlemen’s discussion, Guillemo. I want them out of here!”

Guillemo got hold of himself enough to cease his shrieking, but continued to stare and point, his whole arm outstretched as if reaching to touch the knight while keeping as far away from him as possible. “How did you get here? You’re not supposed to be here!”

“What’s the matter, Guillemo? Did you hope I’d died or something?” Hal rose from the nail keg and walked to the door to glance purposefully up at the glowering sky. The three white-robes backed away into the snow.

The priest balled his fist and dropped it to his side like a hammer. “I should have known it would be you!”

“I see you two are acquainted,” noted Köthen dryly.

Hal turned smoldering eyes on him.

Köthen spread his hands. “What, what?”

“Christ Almighty, Dolph. If you’re going to come charging in to steal a crown, you ought to at least take time to find out what goes on in the kingdom.” The extremity of Hal’s anger gave him strength to hold it in check. “Surely you’re the only man left in God’s Creation who doesn’t know it’s this so-called priest who made me a homeless wanderer!”

“Him? Thought it was your sons.”

“He put the weapon in their hands.”

Under the heat of Köthen’s glare, Guillemo glanced aside but raised his chin. “He is the Anti-Christ.”

“Who is?”

Guillemo jutted his chin in Hal’s direction. “Him. Him.”

“Hal Engle is the Anti-Christ? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“He has converse with dragons.”

“Ah, yes. Dragons.” Köthen eyed Hal sympathetically. “You see what comes from too much study? It’s that old reputation, getting you in trouble again.”

“Mock, mock, my lord, on peril of your soul!” The priest was pointing again. “He brings the ice in summer! He brings dragons to lie in wait!”

Hal smirked at Köthen with sour satisfaction. “And you said nobody took it seriously.”

Guillemo saw his advantage slipping away. He collected
himself with effort. He tightened his robe a bit and smoothed its folds across his chest. “You may well mock, my lord baron, but do you consider it mere coincidence that finds us all here together at this moment?”

“What should I consider it?”

“Destiny, my lord of Köthen.”

Erde absorbed the loaded word with a shudder and wished with every nerve in her body that she was back in Deep Moor. She’d used the distraction of Guillemo’s screeching to gain the cover of the feed bin, but she still felt completely visible to him, sure that it was only a question of when he would choose to notice her.

“Destiny.” Hal made a rude sound.

“Yes! The forces of Destiny have drawn us together! He should not be here now, and yet he is, with all that he can summon from the cold depths of Hell! It is not on the battlefield but in this humble unmarked place that the true contest will be won or lost!”

Köthen had no answer for that. He shrugged. “A battle of the spirit, then, good Brother, which I as a mere soldier can leave to your superior knowledge and experience. Heinrich, gather your kit and your boy. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave your dragons behind. Let’s find someplace warm and get some food in our bellies. Damned unseasonable weather, isn’t it?”

Erde knew it would not be that easy.

“You leave at the peril of your immortal soul, Baron Köthen.” The priest’s voice was suddenly flat and sane, more like the Guillemo that she remembered.

“Ah, but I stay at the peril of my health and my stomach,” Köthen returned with scant civility. “What a dilemma.”

Erde’s father watched this exchange avidly, as if to see if Köthen had any better luck mastering the priest than he’d had.

“You do not fear God or the Devil?” Guillemo gathered himself a little more. It was like watching a man rein himself in on a leash. “Then perhaps a threat to your newly acquired scepter will concern you more.”

Köthen hesitated, and Josef von Alte smiled knowingly.

“Not acquired yet,” Hal threw in uselessly.

“What is it, priest? Can’t you ever just say what you
mean?” Köthen crossed his arms. He knew he’d been snared and wasn’t happy about it.

“I have, my lord. I am. I always do.” Guillemo took up his diffident advocate’s stance, though it remained a bit stiff and artificial, his brain demanding a posture his mad heart could no longer support. But his insinuating tone of voice sent another hot surge of memory through Erde’s skull, a face again and blood, a young man’s body flying through the air, then nothing. But now she knew it was only in hiding. She felt it lurking, just out of reach, the entire memory, awaiting its cue. Guillemo took up a slow back and forth pacing, and Erde heard the slap of sandals on stone, even though the floor was dirt and the priest was barefoot. “Perhaps the meaning is sometimes obscure to you, my lord Köthen, but I say it nonetheless, without concealment. And what I am saying now is that your soul is in danger and your power is threatened. I will leave it to you to decide which peril concerns you more, but how much clearer do you need me to be?” He turned to face Köthen with elaborate politesse.

“Go on,” said Köthen.

“There is a conspiracy at work here, my lord, and it is both treasonous and unholy. My own heaven-sent visions are explained and proven out by the information I had from a man who I thought was your messenger but who now I see had fled to me in righteous terror to bare his soul of what he’d witnessed.”

Guillemo turned to point at Hal again, a bit too fast, a bit too avidly, and jerked himself back into a more reasonable stance. “I’d thought, my lord, that I had prevented this, months ago, but alas, the Fiend has found a way around me to do his foul work. Tonight, the poor man told me, this devil’s minion will tryst with the escaped witch and her rescuer, whom some call the Friend. But he is no friend to the godly. You will notice, my lord, how the name becomes ‘fiend’ with the subtraction of a mere letter. So then, when they are all met, this one here will summon his dragon familiar and spirit them away to the un-Friend’s encampment so that the accursed witch can do her black magic with his godless mob. This I have seen in my visions over and over, though I did not at first comprehend it. The witch will render the mob into an invincible army, which
will march on Erfurt in the name of the deposed king.” Guillemo paused, lowered his pointing arm. “Does that stir your interest at all, my lord Köthen?”

“Do we know it was the Friend who rescued her?”

“I say it was.”

The younger man stared thoughtfully at the floor, toed some broken straw around with his boot, then sighed and looked at Hal.

Hal chuckled. “I’d do it if I could, you know that.”

“Except for the dragon part, my knight, it all sounds too plausible to be ignored.”

“Ah, but the dragon part seems fairly essential. How am I to spirit them away otherwise?”

“How about the dragon part as a metaphor for the royalist underground? I know the town’s riddled with . . . ‘friends.’ This place in particular.” Köthen nodded toward the shadowed corners of the barn. “I’ve had my eye on it for weeks. Haven’t been able to catch anyone in the act . . . before now.”