The Sword of the Lady (15 page)

Edain′s brows knotted. ″That′s a substantial herd of
people
you′re after being the strength of, Chief. Peoples, you might say, and each of them a different folk with different ways and names for the Gods.″

Rudi chuckled a little. His eyes were halfway between turquoise and emerald as he stared into the bed of coals that almost matched the color of his hair. The hot clean scent of burning oak drifted through the dampness of the night air. The shoulder-length mane fell forward, framing the chiseled lines of his face.

″A mix-up it is, and no mistake; a
mispocha
as Aunt Judy would call it. So many peoples and so large a land we don′t even have a
name
for them all. The lands or the peoples-together, either one.″

″Oregon . . . well, Oregon and Washington and Idaho, I suppose . . .″

Rudi shook his head. ″Those are the names of the old world. They′ve lost their magic, even for our parents, and they never meant much to us; they don′t stir men′s souls or make music in their hearts anymore, they′re not
ours
. It strikes me that we need a new name for the whole of it, a footing that we can build the walls of our dreams upon.″

″You could say
the lands of the Corvallis Meeting
,″ Edain replied. ″But that would be just a wee bit cumbersome.″

Rudi nodded. Images tumbled through his head. Masked dancers in the streets of Sutterdown on Samhain Eve; the perfect snowpeak of Mt. Hood; the towers of Castle Todenangst rising over green vineyards and wheat fields gold to the harvest; the Columbia flowing like molten silver between high cliffs with hang gliders dancing in the air above; waterfalls like threads tumbling down from green heights in the mountains; the bells of Mt. Angel calling the monks to prayer on their hilltop aerie; trumpets and splintered lances in a tournament beneath the ruins of Portland; a student hangout in Corvallis and the smell of beer and hamburgers and the sound of sharp young voices arguing the whichness of the wherefore; tall ships spreading their white canvas wings off Astoria amid a storm of gulls, and whales sporting in the gray Pacific waters . . .

″Montival,″ he whispered, and the sound had a . . .
rightness
, like an echo of music heard over the hills by moonlight. ″It′s called Montival. Though the folk there don′t know it yet.″

He looked up and saw Edain shape the word silently a few times, then nod and look up with a light kindling in his direct gray gaze.

″Now, that′s a name with the blessing of the Powers upon it, Chief!
Montival
. It takes all the names—the Clan and Portland and the Yakima and Corvallis and Bend and the others—and puts them together, without making them any the less each by themselves. And it′s
ours
, a Changeling name, not handed down.″

Rudi tapped his fingers on the black tooled leather of his sword scabbard. ″It does have that sound, eh? And this Sword we′re after . . . that could be the symbol for it, do you see? For we go to fetch it through great trials, clansman and Princess and baron, monk and Ranger, and we bring it back through fire and peril to its new home, there to guard the land.″

Edain nodded slowly. ″The sword of the High King,″ he said, as if testing the sound.

His words dropped into the noises of the night like a distant horn-call that makes men stop and listen amid the work of field and street.

″The High King of Montival.″

Rudi′s head came up. A complex shudder went through him; he closed his eyes and shook his head.

″I′ve no desire for
that
,″ he said with quiet vehemence. ″Tanist of the Mackenzies and Chief in my turn . . . that would be more than enough.″

Edain grinned. ″Sure, and if you did want it with an eager craving, you′d not be the man for the job, now would you? But I′ve heard you say to others that the King is the sacrifice that goes consenting.″

″If . . . if we
needed
it,″ Rudi said reluctantly.

″And do we not? To deal with the Cutters, if nothing else.″

″There′s the Meeting at Corvallis,″ Rudi noted—but his own tone was defensive, and Edain snorted.

″Which has something in common with a donkey, does it not? And it′s not so long ago we fought each other in the War of the Eye, and wouldn′t a High King be the one to make sure that doesn′t happen again? But better you than me, Chief. All
I
want is to have my own croft and roof-tree someday, and a hearth to sit beside on winter evenings.″

He lay back and gathered his blanket roll about him. Rudi shook his head again, then sighed and did likewise. There was much to do; tomorrow they′d get to work.

Though getting people to do what′s needful
is
part of a Chief′s work,
he thought.
And bashing their heads not the best way of doing so, when another′s to be had. High King, though . . .

He shuddered again; bad enough to be Chief, even among a folk who mostly governed themselves. To handle a dozen lands, each as likely as not to quarrel with the others, would be a nightmare all his life long.

But . . . there′s a good deal that needs doing, and perhaps a High King
could
do it.
More happily:
And such a man would
have
to marry Matti, now wouldn′t he? For only as her handfasted man would the Associates accept him.

His thoughts quieted, and he drifted down into the soft darkness. But the Sword glowed against that velvet, turning as if it fell through stars and shadows, falling out of memory and time towards the hand he stretched up to grasp it.

As if he
remembered
wielding it on a stricken field.

CHAPTER FIVE

Father Ignatius, priest and knight-brother of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict, bowed his tonsured head to the Cardinal-Archbishop of Des Moines as the older man looked up from his written report, and put his hands inside the wide sleeves of his coarse monastic robe. The cleric had read it twice before the comment.

″I was honored beyond my worth, Your Eminence,″ he said, with humility in his voice.

Suddenly his serious young face was lit up from within by a joy that he could feel filling him as candlelight did a glass globe. No detail of the meeting in the cold December mountains above Chenrezi Monastery had left him in the long months since, and neither had the happiness that plucked at his soul like a harpist′s fingers at a string.

″What can I do but strive all my life to be worthy of it?″ he said, and only stern control kept the tears from his eyes.

The Prince of the Church leaned back in his chair, his crimson-sashed cassock rustling; his short-cropped beard and the little left of his hair were white, and his face lined and seamed beneath the red skullcap. The office was plain, as befitted a man of austerity, but it was large and paneled in smooth dark woods; this was the headquarters of the Church in the whole of the upper Mississippi Valley. The view gave on gardens, and not far away the lime-fueled searchlights of the perimeter wall around the old State Capitol where the Heasleroads now ruled.

″I must either pity your madness, or struggle against the sin of envy,″ the Cardinal said.

Ignatius felt a flash of resentment at the skepticism he saw in the probing gaze; who was this hesitant old man to doubt him? There was no time for delay!

The Princess I am commanded to guard and serve by the
Queen of Angels
is in need of his help, and he
dares
to question me?

Ignatius had learned discipline in hard schools; as a smallholder′s son, and as novice, brother and ordinand at Mt. Angel. Not least he had learned the discipline of the self. He bowed his head a little further; when he raised his face again it was calm, whatever turmoil clenched his soul within. He catalogued the objects within sight, as an aid to self-control. A prie-dieu stood in one corner, and a fine crucifix on the wall behind the desk between two tall open windows, and a photograph—post-Change—of the late Pope on the mahogany surface.

Ignatius met those eyes for an instant, the haunted indomitable gaze of a survivor who had seen a world die and flinched from nothing as he worked to build anew from the rubble. Then he raised his own eyes for a long moment to the Man upon the Cross, and felt a flush of shame.

Forgive me, Lord, and help me put down pride. Always we crucify You, over and over again. Help me find the courage to follow where You lead, to take up
my
cross and make of all suffering an offering to You.

The older man sighed and touched strong stubby fingers to his brow. Then he looked at the documents Ignatius had presented with their seals and ribbons; he flicked one of them aside slightly, with a rustle of stiff official paper.

″You bring glowing recommendations from the head of your Order, and favorable ones from Cardinal-Archbishop Maxwell in Portland; the more favorable for being slightly grudging. As it happens I knew the Cardinal-Archbishop before the Change; we were young men together in Rome for a time. And of course Badia has kept me informed of the founding and growth of your Order. Nor is the vision without precedent even in recent times; there is St. Maximillian Kolbe . . .″

Ignatius nodded gravely; he′d studied that when he was a novice. The Virgin had appeared to Kolbe when he was a boy in Poland about a hundred years ago now, offering him a choice between the red crown of martyrdom and the white of purity. He′d chosen both . . . and been sent to Auschwitz for sheltering Jews in his monastery during the great war of the previous century. And died there when he volunteered his own life in place of a younger man with a family.

The tale was daunting, but strengthening as well. Kolbe had died of thirst and starvation and then poison in that mortal-made antechamber of Hell. And died blessing the men who killed him so slowly and so cruelly, begging them to seek God′s forgiveness for their souls before it was too late.
That
was what the Faith could make of a man, or a man make of the Faith.

Can I reach such heights?
he asked himself. Then he looked up once more to the Man of Sorrows.
Dare I do less? Be ye perfect, He commanded.

The Cardinal went on: ″And I do not think you are mad, my son. But I am not altogether sure that you are to be envied. You have received a stupendous honor; but from such men much is demanded.″

″Thank you for your trust in me, Father,″ Ignatius said; his gaze flicked back to the great carved Rood.

The elderly man suddenly smiled. ″Yes, yes, there is always that. How dare we decline a burden, when we are called to imitate Him? But
are
you aware of the honor done you? She herself called upon you to be her champion?″

″You shall be my knight, Karl Bergfried,″
Ignatius said quietly, wonder in his tone. ″And . . .″

The worn wise Jewish face, a smile as tender as motherhood itself, and the glimpse of a soul that blazed with a fire of majesty and power like the jeweled radiance at the heart of suns. His hand went to his forehead, remembering the touch of that finger, and the world dissolving in joy.

″. . . it is impossible to describe, Father; though I had the tongues of men and of angels.″

The Cardinal crossed himself. ″This report must be dispatched to the Curia and the Holy Father in Badia by the next courier boat down the Mississippi,″ he mused. ″Both the vision, and the knowledge you have won of the Cutter cult, will be of the greatest value to Holy Mother Church.″

Ignatius nodded grimly and signed himself in turn; the skin over his spine and groin crawled at the memory of what he′d seen. Of Kuttner pulling himself up Rudi Mackenzie′s sword, laughing between teeth bright with arterial blood and reaching for the living man′s throat with dead hands.

″That is not simply heresy and lust for power,″ he said. ″Diabolism is at work. The power of the Enemy is made manifest through Corwin.″

″Those who would sell their souls usually find a buyer, to their eternal regret,″ the Cardinal said; his fingers traced the cross again. ″Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. And we must certainly give you every aid in the Church′s gift here.″

He sighed. ″My only fear is that that may not be as much as you need. We have little secular influence in Iowa, and while God has favored this state in many ways, it is . . .″

The ecclesiastic hesitated slightly. Ignatius recognized the tone: it was the one used when tactful words were made to convey a blunt truth.

″. . . not well-governed at present. The factions around Anthony Heasleroad are like a knot of rattlesnakes beneath a rock. We need not obey unjust laws for their own sake, but prudence is also enjoined on us.
As gentle as doves, as wise as serpents
, remember.″

″Still, there are many of our flock here who have positions of wealth, power and influence,″ Ignatius said. ″The Heuisinks, for example. We were guests at their estate before we came on to Des Moines, and Ingolf Vogeler is a close friend of the Heuisink heir.″

The Cardinal nodded. ″But they are not much in favor at court.″ He shook his head, looking a little bemused for an instant. ″How natural that sounds now!″

Ignatius frowned.
Why shouldn′t it sound . . . ah, the Cardinal is an elderly man. One must make allowances for those raised before the Change. They had a habit of judging the years they lived as if they were a play or story, rather than taking their roles for granted.

″In any case, I had no intention of calling on you for physical force, Your Eminence,″ Ignatius said. ″My Order is a militant one, but we are strictly enjoined not to seek secular power or to defy the authorities of any realm except at greatest need. What I principally beg of you is first, information, and then—″