The Crystal Empire (49 page)

Thanking Brother Hansl, Owald crossed the courtyard, told the pro
c
tor he was going out—Owald was not a member of the Brotherhood, nor u
n
der its discipline; he’d never been tapped, nor had he any desire in that direction—since his father was away upon one of his many pilgri
m
ages. Once out of the compound he began dog-trotting up the road t
o
ward the overgrown ruins where the old woman lived.

The weather-grayed shack was in worse condition than he’d ever seen it before. Yellow weeds grew shoulder-high about it. Unpainted shutters hung limp over broken windowpanes of tallowed paper. The little stoop-porch was missing many of its floorboards. He knew, whene’er it rained, the unpatched roof leaked. This he’d offered thrice to repair. He’d been each time refused.

Behind the ramshackle little building lay the circular weed-grown jumble of fallen stones, of broken, fire-blackened columns which he knew—had never spoken to anyone about—was still the site of occ
a
sional clande
s
tine gatherings by a group of women, for the most part old ones, which called itself the Sisterhood.

A strange feminine parody, it was, of the Cult his father led, the Cult which had been, for all of his short life, the center of the village’s rel
i
gious existence. As a boy, he’d sneaked upon the circle such nights, li
s
tening, sometimes learning. He’d come to believe Ilse Sedrichsfrau had always known of this, yet, in tacit return upon his silence, had herself told no one of his trespass.

Taking care to avoid patches of rotted flooring, Owald stepped onto the porch, rapped with his knuckles upon the frame of a door swinging upon but a single leather hinge.

“Owald? Is it you, lad?”

The voice from inside was weak, but the syllables were crisp. To the boy, after the brilliant sunlight, peering into the humble dwelling was like looking into a cave.

He stepped inside, brushing with an absent gesture at his eyelashes to remove a fresh strand of spiderwebbing which he hadn’t seen stretched across the doorway.

“Yes, Ilse Sedrichsfrau, ’tis I.”

“Come in, lad, come closer.”

Inside, as his light-drenched eyes adjusted, young Owald could make out the old woman sitting upon a narrow cot, her bony knees draped with a patchy knitted coverlet, a crushed wicker basket of clothing b
e
side her, her mending in her lap.

Her hands were white—he knew they’d feel icy to the touch, they ever had—the ropy veins upon them blue-black in this light. Beneath the short, well-combed white hair, her eyes, though they were surrounded with wri
n
kled, sagging flesh, were bright and clear.

Owald pulled a wobbling stool beside the cot.

“Are you not well today, Ilse?”

“You’re right, lad, I’m not well.”

She sighed, tidied up the mending in her lap, brushed at strands of thinning hair lying upon her forehead. She folded her pale hands across her thin frame.

“In fact, I’ll not last through this coming night. The Goddess, for all Her sense of humor, sets no great store in surprises. Sometimes She lets you know about these things.”

A pang went through the boy, followed by a surprising feeling of embarrassment.

“But, Ilse—”

“Now, now, if I’m not disturbed about it, there’s no reason for you to be. I’ve lived a long life. An eventful one, though, save for those pr
e
cious moments spent with you, the happiest of times are far behind me. These last years are, for the most part, best set aside, not included in the count. I’ll have peace now, surcease from poignant memory—from this damnable aching in my bones! I just wanted to say goodbye to you, and to give you something belonging to you.”

With a twist Owald himself might not have managed, Ilse reached upward to a shelf fastened to the wall behind her cot, pulled out a small, ba
t
tered leather-bound book.

She handed it to Owald.

“What’s this, Ilse? ’Tisn’t mine.”

“By right of inheritance it is,” she answered. “It belonged to your f
a
ther. Well I ought to know. I gave it to him when he was a good deal younger than you are.”

“My father...”

Owald leafed through the book. It had been blank when given as a gift; now it was full of neatly-wrought sketches free of smudges, of arithmetic calculations, of brief cryptic passages concerning the fashio
n
ing of such things as leaf-springs, the cutting of screw-threads, the mi
x
ing of caustic bluing salts.

“But, Ilse, ’tis the notebook of an artisan. A blacksmith, at a guess. My father—”

“Your father was that artisan, my lad. Sedrich was the name I gave him, son of Sedrich, himself the son of Owald, after whom you’re called. You’re my own grandson—don’t you be looking at me in that wise! I may be old, but I’m damned well not senile! I’m that glad to be going away ere such befalls me. You’re the son of my son Sedrich, self-exiled from Helvetia upon the very day I ripped you from your dead mother’s body—such a fresh pretty thing she was—to see you stolen by the wormy apple who now claims to be your father.”

“But, Ilse...”

“Ask Old Helga, the fletcher’s wife. She’s an ancient, too, like me, beyond fearing any reprisal the Cult might threaten. Ask anyone in this village with the spine to speak the truth—though I fear you’ll be a long time looking for one such, these bitter days. I let you grow up as you did that you
would
grow up, but the time’s short now. It’s past time you knew the truth.”

Owald’s mouth hung open, wordless.

This Ilse took immediate advantage of, speaking first of greathearted Sedrich Owaldsohn, her blacksmith husband, of clever and inquisitive Sedrich Sedrichsohn, her son—the father-in-truth young Owald Sedric
h
sohn had never been allowed to know.

She spoke, too, of beautiful Frae Hethristochter, of her loathing for the evil suitor Oln Woeck, of grim shining
Murderer
and the mighty and terrible deeds accomplished with it, of the ancient rise of the Brothe
r
hood, the concomitant fall of the Sisterhood, of a lifetime of change, little of it for the better.

She spoke to Owald for a considerable time, at the end of which her voice had begun to rasp. There were salt-tears running down her wri
n
kled cheeks. Yet she was still in command of her voice when she poin
t
ed out a glazed bicolored pottery of apple cider sitting cool in the shade upon a rickety table beneath a shuttered window.

The boy fetched it.

They shared a drink.

“No one can say what became of my Sedrich.”

Ilse spoke after a long silence. The tears had ceased to flow. They would never flow again.

“Save that, wounded as he was, believing you and Frae dead, I’d guess he pointed his face westward where his mind was e’er straying, toward the Great Blue Mountains.”

Owald rose from the stool.

“I’ve no weapon of power such as
Murderer,
but I swear by Jesus’ suffe
r
ing—or by your Goddess, Ilse—I’ll slay my fa—Oln Woeck when he r
e
turns from pilgriming in the southland.”

The old woman shook her head.

“Pilgriming, my wrinkled old behind! He trades there with the Inva
d
er, as did your mother’s father, Hethri Parcifal, whose sideline he ‘inhe
r
ited,’ to the enrichment of the coffers of the Cult, while villagers go hungry for the merciless tithing!”

Her voice dropped suddenly.

“Owald, hear me. There’s no such object as a sword of power. There’s naught but iron, and the ordinary powers men of power—powers of the mind, I tell you—have learned to put into it.”

She sighed, changing the subject.

“Ah, well, I can’t say ’twould be an altogether evil thing to do, fille
t
ing yon blue-templed old—but ’twould be a waste of effort. He’ll pass off in his time, as I’m about to do, and with less grace. And more fear, methinks. Meantime, letting him live’s the best revenge. It must be a miserable thing to be Oln Woeck.”

“What should I do...Grandmother?”

Ilse smiled at the boy’s use of the word. Tears threatened to spring forth once more. Controlling them, she replied, “Whate’er you will, lad. ’Tis what your father suffered to achieve. Wreak whate’er of yourself you wish to—”

“I’ll find him, if he yet lives.”

Ilse raised a hand to pat him upon the knee nearest.

“You please me beyond expectation, Owald Sedrichsohn. I couldn’t ask it of you, nor suggest it. There’s great peril to the westward, little hope of safety. Your father may be long dead.”

“Then I’ll find his bones—his father’s greatsword—then return to do Oln Woeck an unlooked-for mercy.”

Ilse sighed.

“Men. Find my Sedrich living, and you’ll not part him from his f
a
ther’s sword—though this might be the undertaking to convince him. Tell him what I ne’er had a chance to. I loved him as a child. I was that proud of what he grew to be, albeit most of the growing was perforce accomplished upon one single, terrible—”

“I’ll tell him, Grandmother, I’ll—Grandmother? Ilse!”

It was as if the old woman had nodded off to sleep, one hand resting upon her mending, the other hanging, relaxed, over the edge of her cot. A gentle smile lay upon her careworn face. Bending close beside her, he could feel no breath against his cheek, no pulse within her thin wrist, nor at the base of her neck.

Owald sat beside her in silence for a long while, watching a small spider repair the damage he’d done to its web entering the hut. Midday came, later on the lengthening shadows of the afternoon. At last he co
v
ered Ilse with the knitted blanket she’d draped across her knees. Taking with him the little leather notebook, he ducked beneath the spider’s web, taking his last leave of the hovel.

Her Sisters would give Ilse proper burial.

He’d left the compound and the village before dark.

3

Unnoticed, either by the two men or the dark-eyed girl who listened past a barrier of foreign language, the engines of the airship throbbed i
n
side the room.

“The rest of it,” Owald finished at length, “is simple enough, though a long time in the happening.

“I headed west, but was neither as lucky nor as wise as my father. I lost aught I carried in the sea-wide river which divides the forest from the plains. I was captured by the Sioux ere I saw the Great Blue Mou
n
tains. In chains transported, as a slave, to their stony feet. Not a tale I’m much proud of.”

Fireclaw had risen during Owald’s speech. He stood staring out the odd round window at the mountains passing beneath the great ship. Now he turned to his son.

“How’d you come to soldier for His Imperial What’sit?”

Owald glanced round about to see who’d overheard the blasphemous epithet. Then he relaxed, laughing.

“Zhu Yuan-Coyotl told you the truth. Not a thing e’er leaves Han-Meshika, Father, artifices, knowledge, people—in particular that which first comes in from the outside. ’Tis our—’tis its—greatest strength. No one outside knows aught about it, while it knows aught that passes in this whole wide world.”

Fireclaw dragged the other chair beside that his son occupied. E
l
bows upon his knees, Owald leaned forward.

“While impressed by my prowess as a warrior, the savages were afraid to keep me as their own. Far from being the model slave, I b
e
came prope
r
ty to a succession of increasingly dissatisfied owners, sold further and fu
r
ther west.”

He moved closer.

“We may even have crossed paths upon one occasion. I believe I was among a number of ‘guests’ who stopped at your ranch for water and a rest. I never saw you, but guessed later from mutterings about our host, the mighty Fireclaw, who you might be.”

Owald hesitated, then added, “Slave-runners have a potion with which they treat the only food they give their captives. It numbs the will, but leaves the sensibilities intact. I’d have given you proper greeting at your ranch, were it not for the fact I never thought to do it.”

He shuddered.

“The drug also dulls the fighting-spirit, and the capacity to breed more slaves, so it is withdrawn once captives are brought within Han-Meshika. I learned afterward it’s used there as medicament for certain distempers of the blood.”

He leaned back again.

“I came at last into the Sun’s domain, where, drawing some attention with my fighting skills, I came into his service, eventually joining and co
m
ing to lead the elite contingent of his guard.”