The Crystal Empire (29 page)

Fighting back an anger which threatened to sweep consciousness away, Fireclaw stepped forward, whispering through clenched teeth.

“What makes you think I haven’t, mutilator of children and helpless cripples? I pay fire-tithe to no man now, nor any god!”

At some saner level within him, he was glad he’d not brought Ursi to the shop with them. Sensing what his master felt, the great bear-dog would likeliest have torn the old man’s throat out.

“Give me a tithe instead, priest,” he hissed, “a tithe of words. I stayed my hand this morning, though that looks more and more to be an unwise decision. Give me a single reason why I should allow you to live another heartbeat. I’m still at it, am I? You presume much for someone who’s at the most charitable best an unwelcome visitor.”

Oln Woeck chuckled, a sound to raise the short hairs upon the back of anybody’s neck. Those who foolishly believed in honor and the like were defenseless puppets to him. His cowardly display had served its purpose this morning and could be dispensed with now. He’d other, be
t
ter strings to jerk.

“Nor hath thy manner much improved. A wise man did inform me once that a guest is a jewel upon the cushion of hospitality. Treat’st thou all thy guests like the cushion rather than the jewel?”

He chuckled again.

“No matter. I simply observe that thou still followest the mechanic’s trade, in any case, and that, like all thy worldy efforts, ’tis a wasted one and futile.”

A peculiar species of embarrassment swept through the Helvetian warrior, astonishment and chagrin that a grown man could utter such no
n
sense and nature leave him yet alive. Still, he himself permitted Oln Woeck to go on breathing simply because of this devouring need of his to learn more.

“Have you lost hold of all caution along with your senses, senile one? Look about you at what I’ve built—”

He held up his steel- and leather-covered stump.

“—single-handedly, thanks to your good offices. Tell me, worthless parasite, how’s the effort wasted which feeds me and mine at no e
x
pense to anybody else?”

Oln Woeck frowned, as if considering this.

“Your, um,
wife...
we’ll pass discussing her for a time. I say what I say upon account of these selfsame Saracens. Thou’rt but one man, whose solitary efforts are inevitably wasted. They, in their greater nu
m
bers and in selfless cooperation, have far surpassed your smidgenous tinkering, young Sedrich.”

Fireclaw laughed, and in the laughing felt himself relax. Neither man knew it, but it was at this moment that the younger of the two became most dangerous.

“Oln Woeck, as e’er, you mistake me. I don’t begrudge the worthy accomplishments of others, but try to learn from them. Thus I’ve built upon the meager legacy which you and others like you did your Jesus-damnedest to destroy for all time.”

He gazed about the shop as he’d invited Oln Woeck to do, as if se
e
ing it for the first time himself.

“’Twas a place to start from,” he nodded with grim satisfaction, “the onliest I had.”

He brightened and, for a moment, was the boy Old Woeck had known.

“Now I’ll learn whate’er these harsh-spoken strangers have to teach me, and go on from there.”

The leader of the Brotherhood opened his mouth to protest this enormity, but was interrupted by Fireclaw, who’d had another thought.

“If anybody’s work’s futile, ’tis yours, limb-chopper. Here these i
m
pious strangers worship different gods than yours, have for centuries by all a
c
counts, and haven’t yet been punished for it. They seem to have waxed more prosperous by far and healthier than those who’ve taken your advice. What say you to that?”

“I say to you that God’s good time is not a man’s time. I say that prosperity measureth not a man’s soul, nor a people’s. I say that a man’s healthy aspect is a disguised curse—’tis simply that much longer he must needs remain within this illusory vale of tears and testing, before ascending to the real world.”

He spread his yellow, ropy hands. “E’en did I concern myself with such worldy matters, I’d not sanction this wasteful duplication of vain effort which thou celebratest, boy. Each person hath his rightful place in God’s well-ordered—”

Fireclaw drew his revolver.

Oln Woeck stepped back a step.

Fireclaw thumbed the latch below the rear sight, pressed the barrel against his thigh, and tipped both it and the cylinder forward upon the frame. Nine golden cylinders rose slightly from their chambers.

“Look here at a sample of such wasteful duplication, Oln Woeck. Here’s a cartridge of my devising. The brass casing holds black powder, percussive primer, and a length-split shoe of resin which in its turn co
n
tains a tiny arrow.”

He slapped the pistol shut against his leg, holstered it, and shuffled through the clutter of the bench, displaying cartridge parts which had not yet been assembled.

“My first shoes were of carven wood. I shot one of your blue-templed bugger-boys with such a load, remember?” He grinned. “No matter, as you say. These Saracens, on the other hand, push great globs of lead from out of their barrels. Both ideas are sound. I think I’ve got the edge o’er them for range and penetration, while their approach is best for knocking things down. Different people arrive at different a
n
swers to the same problem, causing all to benefit. ’Twas e’er thus.”

Oln Woeck made a strangled noise.

There was silence for a time.

“I came here, Young Sedrich, neither to open old wounds nor to d
e
bate with thee upon the pragmatics of heresy. ’Twas my purpose for this afte
r
noon to bring thee tidings overdue of the village thou didst abandon in thy youth.”

He peered into Fireclaw’s eyes.

“Knowest thou that thy mother’s dead?”

The naked words were like a slap across the face. He stood a long while reeling from it, leaning on the bench beside him, while pain coursed through his body, centering on a tight, burning knot in his sto
m
ach. His eyes stung with boyish tears. It wasn’t the kindliest wise in which to change the subject, Fireclaw thought when he was somewhat recovered. Why he’d expected better of the old man he didn’t know.

“’Tis true, my boy, these past five years. I came with that news for thee, and other word which concerneth all Helvetii.”

Fireclaw bowed his head and closed his eyes, pressing pain away from himself.

“What was the manner of her dying?”

“The manner of her dying,” Old Woeck replied, “was that she passed away without pain in her sleep, weary with a long-carried burden of grief which was entirely of thy making.”

He smiled. “One gathereth that her last thought was of thee.”

A puzzled look crossed Fireclaw’s face as he experienced a strange, emptying sensation. Ever had Oln Woeck had the best of him. He’d been prepared to kill the Cultist when the land-ship had arrived and had let hi
m
self be persuaded otherwise—though it had been the dream of a lifetime to spill the old man’s guts into the dirt.

Next, he’d resolved to deny the man, exchange no words with him, refuse him whatever it was he wanted. That resolve had not lasted an hour.

Now they stood in converse, as if they still were neighbors. As if there weren’t decades of bad blood between them. And now his righ
t
eous anger, the burning in the pit of his stomach which had sustained him through all the terrible years upon the plains, and for which five hundred Comanche warriors and many others had suffered, had deserted him, leaving him naught behind it but a sucking hollowness.

He looked down to where his right hand had been.

“My mother’s dead. What other glad tidings have you brought me, Oln Woeck? Be quick, for I’ve things to do, and my patience shortens with each breath I draw.”

The old man’s eyes widened.

“Why, Sedrich, my boy, thou’st verily grown taller but no wiser. Look thou round thyself, at this prosperous establishment, thy fields, thy shops, thy dogs, thy...woman. Consider but thy formidable new name. ’Twas
I
who put thee here. Neither wouldst thou’ve a scrap of it, were it nor for the will of Him who worketh through me.”

Sedrich felt a welcome flash of renewed rage at the injustice being spoken.

In another breath, even that much deserted him.

Oln Woeck continued. “E’en so, thou didst hurry off too soon, and hast borne with thee certain assumptions which are incorrect, concerning the final outcome of events.”

“What?”

“I see I’ve thy interest at last.” Oln Woeck chuckled. “Thy lady-love, young Fr—”

“Speak not her name or you shall die where you stand!”

The old man cleared his throat.

“As you wish it. She who was to have been my lawful bride, accor
d
ing to the customs of our people, died not in vain entire.”

“What are you speaking of, you, you—”

“She bore thee a son whose life thou didst believe as lost as hers. But it was not to be. Thou art a father still, Sedrich-called-Fireclaw. Thy son’s name’s called Owald.”

2

The slanting sun streamed into the workshop door, glinting off the metal parts and tools, dazzling the eyes. Fireclaw’s head was whirling. A son! Why, in the name of aught that was intelligent and decent, had he fled? Why had he—

He turned and seized the Cultist’s robe, lifting the man off his feet.

“What became of my son, old man, tell me now do you wish to live an eyeblink longer!”

“Why, Sedrich,” Oln Woeck squeaked. There was a tone of triumph to him, nonetheless. “I’ve not the faintest of ideas.”

Fireclaw set him down upon the oil-stained dirt floor.

The old man smiled, exposing toothless gums, enjoying Fireclaw’s pain and consternation.

“Treachery’s an inherited trait within thy line, boy. We’d a bargain, Si
s
ter Ilse and myself, a bargain which she violated at the premonition of her death.”

Fireclaw raised one good hand, palm outward in interruption. “You mean she knew...?”

The old man nodded. Both knew it happened in that wise with the Sisters sometimes.

“She told my son—
thy
son—
our
son about the circumstances of his birth. Fifteen years old he was by then, e’en younger than thyself, m
e
thinks, and he, too, disappeared. ’Tis rumored to seek thee out.

“He hath not been heard of since.”

3

Dove Blossom found her husband where she’d thought she would, in a favorite spot of theirs, high upon a ridge above their ranch where they’d first hunted together, fifteen years before. Refusing to make Old Woeck any immediate answer—it was characteristic of the old man, she understood, to follow up on unjust calumny and shocking news by d
e
manding a favor—Fireclaw had left the ranch overnight, heading for the hills to think things through.

To the east, the land slanted dizzily—a “hogback” Fireclaw named it, although she had never seen one of the half-feral pigs his people had brought with them from an Old World which was scarcely real to her i
t
self—as if tip-tilted by a giant, losing four hundred paces of altitude in not much over twice that horizontal distance. Across this windswept d
i
agonal, sage, coarse grasses, stunted pine, and cactus intermingled, fo
d
der for the gray-brown ghostly mule deer, hares, ground squirrels, and rabbits, all drawing meager sustenance from the reddish, sandy soil.

To the west, the ridge lost half its height all at once, in a sharp, vert
i
cal drop overlooking a broad, pale green and boulder-studded mountain meadow where grew the yellow and purple flowers she was named for. Porcupine gnawed girdles in the bark of aspen trees. Beyond lay mou
n
tain forest, above that snow, blue-purple barren rock, and mysteries she had no wish to penetrate.

North and south the ridge extended, a league in each direction, until it was broken off like the brittle edges of a bit of kneaded cornmeal dough. Here creek valleys, dry this time of year, flowed from the mou
n
tains to the plains. Daytimes, one could see across these steep-sided clefts to their ot
h
er sides, where the ridges took up once again, bordering the Great Blue Mountains as they marched from ice and tundra in the north to the broi
l
ing of southern deserts.

Tonight the sky was clear and still.

Coming unheard upon him, Dove Blossom saw Fireclaw sitting cross-legged before a fire no bigger than his fist. His back was toward the wind-twisted trunk of a fallen evergreen, too big to have lived upon this weather-tortured ridge, and having at last paid the price.