The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  Brother Fortunatus stood beside her, weeping tears of fright, or compassion, or pain.

  “What did you mean,” she asked suddenly, “when you preached the parable of the child buried beneath a landslide?”

  His face was streaked with dust and a smear of blood, and his eyes seemed startlingly white in contrast, like those of a spooked horse. “Are you Presbyter Hugh’s spy?”

  “I am a King’s Eagle, Brother. But on my journey south to Aosta, I met one of my fellow Eagles, a woman called Hathui—”

  He sank to his knees. Around him, his companions exclaimed while drums resounded and horns rang. Distantly she heard a troop of horse pounding along an unseen street. No one regarded them. A brick fell from the wall of St. Asella’s, shattering where it hit the ground not a body’s length from them.

  “We are desperate, Eagle.” Fortunatus clasped her hands as though he were a supplicant and she the regnant. “Sister Rosvita has been imprisoned in the dungeon of the skopos for over two years. I pray you, help us rescue her.”

  “How can it be that the king has allowed this to happen? She is his most trusted counselor. Did she turn against him?”

  “Never! That night we heard only Hathui’s frightened testimony. She told us that the queen and the presbyter had conspired to control the king with sorcery, with a daimone. Sister Rosvita went away with the Eagle to seek Margrave Villam and the king. She must have seen the truth. Why else would they have imprisoned her?”

  “Why not kill her, then?”

  “I have often wondered, but I think—”

  “Look!” cried Sister Heriburg.

  Cavalry advanced down the crowded avenue like ghosts advancing through fog. The soldiers pressed forward through the panicked mob, who threw bricks and screamed abuse at them.

  “There will never be a better time,” said Hanna, scanning the chaos. “They’ll need every guard in the city to restore order, to dig out the injured, to protect the king and queen and the Holy Mother herself. If we go now, perhaps we can save her. Who is with me?”

  “I am with you!” cried Fortunatus, rising to his feet. “Nor need I vouch for my companions.” He gestured to the rest of their party.

  “I am with you!”

  “And I!”

  “I will never desert Sister Rosvita!”

  “God bless you, Eagle.” Aurea wiped blood from her cheek with her scarf as she wept.

  They all cried out, these soft, educated, nobly-born clerics. How much hardship had they ever faced, three girls freshly come from the convent? The two young men looked no more worldly. Only Fortunatus and Aurea seemed constructed of sterner stuff, less likely to shatter if a cataclysm wrenched them. But they had all endured in Darre for two years, fiercely protective of their imprisoned mentor.

  Hanna admired their loyalty.

  She could not believe that Sister Rosvita would ever turn against the king, just as she herself would never turn against the king. But if the king were no longer in control of himself, then she must do what she could to fight those who had made him a captive in his own body.

  “We must hurry, while they’re still in confusion. Where does this alley lead if we go the other way? Can we get to the palace by back streets? We’ll need lamps.”

  Fortunatus braved the church and returned with three miraculously unbroken lamps and a jar of oil. They made their way back toward the palace, keeping off the main avenues where they were most likely to meet soldiers. The destruction, although extensive, wasn’t as bad as that terrible collapse of the dome of St. Marcus. Yet they still had to pick their way over waves of rubble. They still heard the screams of the trapped, the crushed, and those who feared a loved one might have perished. Dust made them cough, so they fixed cloth over their faces to protect themselves. Their clothing was filthy, their faces blackened by soot, ash, and the clogging, stinging dust.

  The main ramp leading up to the palaces was choked with traffic as courtiers and servants fled. A fire had broken out in one wing of the regnant’s palace. It was not easy to push against the flow of bodies frantically flooding away, but by the gates the crush worked to their advantage as they slipped past the guards undetected.

  They pressed through the agitated crowd and into the relative quiet of a niche where travelers could water their thirsty mounts. A leering medusa face came into sudden focus as Hanna raised her lantern. The shaking earth had cracked its hair, and a chunk of the bowl had fallen to the ground. Water dripped uneasily from a loose pipe.

  “Do you know how to find Sister Rosvita?” Hanna asked.

  “I do,” said Fortunatus.

  “Then you and I, and you two, will seek her.” She pointed to the young men, who identified themselves as Jerome and Jehan. “Sisters, you must brave the chaos. We’ll need horses, mules, some kind of wagon or cart in case Sister Rosvita is too weak to ride. Blankets. Provisions, if they’re easily come by. Weapons. I use a staff, and a bow. A sword, in dire straits. Knives would be better than nothing.”

  “None of us are fighters,” said Fortunatus.

  “Make way! Make way for His Honor!”

  Hanna glanced out into the dusty courtyard, but the haze and the fitful movement of the torches made it impossible to see what noble courtier or presbyter fled the palace. Perhaps the king had already seen his young queen to safety. Perhaps Henry waited in a smoky hall, unable to make any decision unless another voice spoke in his ear.

  She could not dwell on such things. She could, perhaps, save one person tonight. She could not save the entire world.

  Aurea and the young women left to seek mounts and a wagon. Fortunatus led them through the servants’ corridors into the palace of the skopos, to the ancient gate where corpses had, in olden days, been hauled down to the river.

  Here, by this gate, a set of steps cut down into the foundation of the palace. No guards barred their path. They crept down the stairs cautiously. A rumble rattled under their feet, and they stopped, pressing against the walls, fearing that the masonry walls might collapse and bury them. Jerome moaned in fear.

  The old palace seemed stable enough. Downward they went on stone stairs rubbed smooth by the passage of many feet, down into chambers cut out of bedrock. As they descended, the air cleared, becoming free of the clinging dust that abraded their lungs. They stumbled into the guards’ room. Everyone had fled, leaving a scarred bench and a table with dice and stones scattered heedlessly over the top. A wooden platter bore a half-eaten loaf of bread and a crumb of cheese. Two mugs had overturned, spilling ale over the tabletop, slowly drying up. A single helm molded of leather lay on the floor.

  But not everyone could flee. Echoing down the two tunnels that cut deeper into the rock, where cells were hewn to house the prisoners, rose cries for help, prayers, and even one poor soul’s maniacal laughter.

  “This way,” said Fortunatus, hurrying down one of the tunnels.

  “What about the other prisoners?” asked Jehan. He and Jerome scuttled along like nervous dogs, shoulders hunched.

  “Heretics, malefici, and worse,” called Fortunatus. “We dare not let any of them go.”

  “I pray you, guardsman! Let me out!”

  “Is the world coming to an end?”

  “Have mercy! Have mercy!”

  “There is no God but Fire!”

  The cries resonated. Although muffled by the thick stone walls, the pleas pierced her heart. Would these captive souls be left to die?

  She bent to pick up the helm. A rat scurried out of it, running over her fingers, and she shrieked and jumped back, cursing, and slammed into the wall. For an instant, sucking in air that would not come, she thought she would asphyxiate. The walls closed around her, dizzying in the feeble glow of the lamp she still gripped. The air smelled sour. Another tremor might cause the entire palace to fall in on top of them.

  They would be buried alive.

  “Get hold of yourself!” She kicked over the helm and cautiously picked it up, shook it. No rats. She set it on the table bef
ore venturing three steps into the low tunnel that ran opposite the one down which Fortunatus had vanished. She heard, behind her, the scrape of a bar being lifted off a door, heard close by the scritch of hands, or claws, on the walls, a madman’s chitter, all singsong. The flame wavered in an eddy of air.

  Voices.

  “—deserting your post!”

  “Nay, Sergeant! What does it matter if God chooses them to die? I can’t bear to remain down there where it’s all dark. The walls will cave in. I’m afraid, Sergeant. Don’t make me go! Don’t make me go!”

  She ran back into the guardroom. The guards had fled with their weapons. Grabbing the helm, she fastened it over her head, then tested the weight of the bench. If a humble bench could serve as a weapon one time, then it would surely serve again. Mercifully, this was a lighter bench than the long bench she and Rufus had hoisted in St. Asella’s. She hoped Rufus and the other Eagles were all out of the city on the king’s business. She prayed the king was safe.

  Up the stairs, the shimmer of a lamp chased away the darkness. She slipped into shadow by the arched opening, the bench braced against her knees, upright. Her arms burned at the weight. Her heart raced.

  Distantly, as through a fog, she heard Fortunatus’ voice. “Come, Sister Rosvita. We are here to rescue you.”

  “Brother Fortunatus?” So changed was that voice, more like a frog’s croak than a woman’s speech, that Hanna would never have recognized it. But it was not without strength. She sounded weak but not weak-minded, frail but not beaten.

  How could anyone survive for two years in such a pit? You might as well be flung into the Abyss.

  “I’ll whip you forward if I must!” cried the sergeant. “What are we to say to the skopos if—”

  Shadows spilled onto the floor before her feet. She heaved up the bench. The two soldiers lurched into view just as Jehan and Jerome appeared at the mouth of the tunnel with a body carried between them and Fortunatus bringing up the rear.

  She brought the bench down hard on the soldiers’ heads before they had time to utter a word. The sergeant went down hard, caught by the full weight of the bench. The soldier staggered forward two steps before his knees buckled under him, but even so he caught himself on his hands and, on hands and knees, retched. No mercy.

  She slammed the bench down on him again, and he fell flat. Blood pooled from his nose. Hanna set down the bench and stripped them of their weapons and belts: a stout spear, a short sword, and two knives.

  “No time to get their armor. We’ve got to lock them up.”

  The soldier still wasn’t knocked out, but he could only whimper and struggle weakly as she rolled him into the open cell where Rosvita had been confined.

  “I pray you, mercy!” he sobbed as he clawed at the ground, trying to get up, but his legs wouldn’t hold him. Blood and vomit smeared his face and the front of his tunic. The sergeant was a dead weight, and Fortunatus had some trouble shifting him, but together they dragged him down the tunnel and, after shoving aside the pleading, weeping soldier, hauled the door shut and dropped the bar into place.

  “Oh, God.” A wave of dizziness so overset her that she stumbled and caught herself on the wall, hearing the moans, the cries, beseeching, begging.

  “We must go,” said Fortunatus.

  It was a nightmare, as though she had fallen into the pit where the souls of all of the people Bulkezu had murdered were trapped forever within stone, never to be free, never to ascend to the Chamber of Light. She was leaving them all behind. She was abandoning them.

  “Jehan and Jerome have carried Sister Rosvita up! Anyone might come! There’s nothing we can do for these people!”

  “We could let them go.”

  “Who knows what terrible crimes they have committed? Why else would the skopos have confined them here? Did you not hear the apostate crying out the Oath made by the fire worshipers?”

  “What if they are unjustly imprisoned, as Sister Rosvita was?”

  “We dare not take that chance. What if even one of them is mad and tries to stop us? We must escape with Sister Rosvita before more people come. I assure you that the skopos, Presbyter Hugh, and the queen herself will not rest until they find her, once they know she is gone. I pray you, Eagle.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, knowing none of the prisoners could hear her although she heard them, their voices rising with despair and panic. “God, forgive me.”

  They took the last oil lamp, leaving the dungeons in a foul darkness.

  A strange power afflicted her limbs, so that she raced up the steps and yet was not winded when they reached the top. The air reeked of dust and hot ash, scalding her lungs. By the Dead Man’s Gate they found Aurea and two of the young sisters waiting with a mule, a broken-backed nag of a mare, and a handcart in which the young brothers had already laid Sister Rosvita most tenderly, cushioning her on a blanket and covering her with another. The young women fussed and whispered, unwilling to let go of Rosvita’s hands, chafing them, kissing them. Aurea had hold of the mounts. She wept silent tears, so overcome with emotion that her face had settled into a grimace as she stared fixedly into the darkness toward the main portion of the palace. The sound of soldiers marching, of a horn and drums, assailed them. Were the soldiers leaving the palace to march down into the city by the main gate, or were they returning in force to garrison the palace? Hanna could not tell. Lights moved on the narrow path that led down to the riverside.

  “Fortunatus.” That croak of a voice had gained power. “What has happened? Why am I here?”

  Dry-eyed, Fortunatus kissed Rosvita’s hands fervently. “God brought about a miracle, Sister.” He was distracted by the sound of hurried footfalls, the slap of sandals. “Where is Heriburg?” he demanded.

  “She would go off!” cried one of the girls aggrievedly.

  There she came, laden with books. “I have your History, Sister!” she cried as she caught sight of them. “I knew you would not rest easy if we had to leave it behind. We must hurry. A whole troop of soldiers is marching in.”

  “The books!” Rosvita lay back in the cart, exhausted.

  Heriburg thrust the books in and around the cleric’s legs and Hanna pulled the blanket over her completely, concealing her.

  “Come,” Hanna said. “We’ll take turns with the cart. Let any who question us be told that we’re rescuing books and cartularies from the king’s schola.”

  It took four of them to negotiate the cart down the steep path, but they had better luck along the avenue that led directly to the western gate. None of the buildings on this stretch had collapsed, although they still had to negotiate the many people milling along the roadway, too afraid to go back inside to fetch their belongings yet unwilling to leave the city without their worldly possessions. A few shouted curses at them, as though the Wendish had brought the disaster down on the city. One man threw a stone that cut an ugly gash on Aurea’s cheek.

  They kept their heads down after that, and Hanna was glad they weren’t leaving by the eastern gate, where anti-Wendish sentiment seemed more volatile. The roar of sound, shouting, wailing, drums, a booming crash that reverberated and collapsed at last into a long rumbling echo, the bleating of goats and the barking of frantic dogs, drove them on.

  When they came to the gates, there were indeed guardsmen, but they trundled past in the safety of a mob of complaining, crying women, laundresses by their garb and talk, laden with bedding and dripping garments.

  “May God have mercy,” murmured Fortunatus as they cleared the wall.

  They had escaped.

  They pushed on, looking fearfully from one side to the other, afraid that someone might recognize them and call to them, but no one did. They walked, switching off at the hand cart, trudging along the road with thousands of refugees. Everywhere, in the fields and along the open pastureland that surrounded the city, people had halted in exhaustion. No one dared to spend the rest of the night under a roof.

  All this Hanna saw in glimpses, sha
pes lost in darkness. Dust swathed the sky behind them, veiling half the sky. It was, horribly, a new moon, so dark that the eerie glow of dozens of fires within the city walls, darkened and intensified by the pall of dust, made the place glow like a furnace, the forge of the ancient gods who had once ruled here. Maybe they had returned to wreak their vengeance at last. Maybe God had punished the interlopers.

  She took a turn at the cart, pushing until she thought her hands would fall off, teeth gritted as she followed the bobbing lamp held by Jehan. No one had ridden the mounts yet. Without saying as much, they all agreed to save the strength of the poor beasts for later. None of them ate. Hanna wasn’t sure if they had provisions, even water. Her throat ached.

  The night wore on endlessly as they took turns pushing the cart and, later, spelling themselves with a ride on the mule. Soon they left the refugees behind and made their solitary way along the deserted road. After a time, the ground sloped up. They had reached the foothills. Pausing partway up the first slope to catch their breath, they all turned to look back the way they had come. Fortunatus pulled the blanket back so that Sister Rosvita could see and held a lamp aloft beside her.

  Darre was burning, not just the city itself but the plain all around, the glow of bonfires where people camped out and, closer in to the walls, lines of funeral pyres. Most strangely, to the southwest, in the mountains, the air was spitting sparks. She shuddered. The earth rumbled and stilled beneath her feet.

  “Where do we go?” asked Fortunatus. “We can’t cross the Alfar Mountains this late in the year.”

  Silence greeted his words. Even Hanna did not know what to suggest. She and Fortunatus had led them this far, but they had come to the end of a rope spun from impulsiveness, courage, and loyalty. Once Hugh discovered in what direction they had fled, he would pursue them.

  She shivered as a cold wind drifted down from the highlands.

  Rosvita stirred, stretching her limbs. “Listen,” she said in her croak of a voice. “Listen.”

  They listened, but they heard only the night wind. Even the noise of the city had fallen behind them.