by Alma Boykin
“Yes. The testing will be in Vienna. Then, a week later, the coronation—with minimal ceremony, as you may well imagine. Then the Hungarian ceremony in Veszprém.”
Father and son locked eyes, both thinking, If he survives the testing. István crossed himself again and returned to breakfast as Janos sipped his coffee.
The hills felt dangerous. István raised his shields higher, pushing out the sense of something watching and weighing him. Janos, beside him in the train car, must have felt his son’s discomfort. “The Power here is—” he paused. “It is wild. Not as wild as Pannonia, or Logres, but it has its own temper and time.”
The hills, part of the Vienna Wood, looked as rugged as any near the Matra, although not as high. Well, István remembered, this marked the end of the Alps, if one believed the geologists and rock specialists. “Pater, do you recall reading or hearing if war can make the Powers wild?”
Janos stroked his chin and thought, turning inward for a few minutes. “I do not know. They are not like us,” the sweep of his hand took in the humans and any others on the train. “I suspect it might be possible, although . . . you have heard the stories about Logres, and about Kutna Hora?”
“The creature in the mine? I remember Cousin Anastasia scaring Mátyás and I with her tales of a wild Power in Bohemia.” She’d had far too much fun, and had been an excellent story teller, engaging the other children’s emotions to the point that, looking back, István wondered if she’d had a Gift of some kind. She’d died from a ruptured appendix a decade ago. “As I recall, she gave us nightmares.”
“That she did. Your mother and Ann had their hands full calming you down for a week afterwards.” Janos shook his head a little. “But there is some truth behind the scary stories, or so I have heard it said. The Houses, even House Habsburg, stays well clear of Rep Hill and Kutna Hora. There is supposedly a form of armed truce in effect—has been since the days of the Hussite Wars.”
Seven hundred years? That’s . . . either amazing or terrifying. I don’t think I want to know which. “There’s a wildness in the land here—something restless, I think.”
Janos nodded. He returned to the book he was reading and István turned his attention back outside the window. Dark stone rose up from the narrow valley floor beside the train, and everything turned dark as they passed through a tunnel. The train chugged along for a few more kilometers until it drew to a whistling, shuddering stop in the tiny hamlet of Rohrbach. The testing would take place close to here, up in the hills near an old, old monastery’s remains. From what Janos had said his father had recalled, the place had been dedicated to Sts. Anthony and Simon Stylites, both hermits in the wilderness. The place certainly looked and felt wilderness enough for István. He knew that people had been living in this area since the eighth day of Creation, so to speak, but still. “I do not think I will be bringing Barbara and little Mátyás here on vacation,” he murmured to his father, as they collected their few bags and walked down the platform.
“Likely not.” They looked around at the waiting carts and other vehicles. “Ah.” He pointed to a trap near the end of the row. As they got closer, István caught sight of red, white, and green ribbons tucked under the driver’s black mourning band. “Are you waiting for Count Eszterházy?”
The man nodded and got down from the driver’s seat. “Servus. Yes, my lord. If it pleases you?” He opened the small door to the trap, and Janos and István climbed in. The driver returned to his seat and clicked his tongue. The small, old horse strained a bit, then set off at a less-than-blinding pace along the tree-edged dirt road.
Will we get there before the war ends? But István need not have worried. Only twenty minutes or so passed before they stopped in front of a hunting lodge tucked into the flank of the mountain. The August afternoon sun poured down on them, at least for the moment, but no wind moved the dark trees. István and Janos got out of the cart as two more servants appeared.
“This way, my lord,” one of them told the air above Janos’s head, before turning on his heel and stalking with great dignity up the steps into the building. He reminded István of a stork, except no stork had such a round body and head. Well, Janos was a mere count, after all, at least in the rankings of nobility in the empire. Prince Miklos would have gotten better treatment, but that was beside the point, at least here and now. Tonight, well, Janos and István would be in the front ranks: a prospect that István no longer relished.
István did appreciate the comforts of the “small” hunting lodge. Electric lights, well-stocked fireplaces, lovely rear-feed corner stoves decorated with pictures of game birds and wild animals, and flush toilets all told of the wealth of the House. A servant set out István’s clothes for the evening before disappearing. István was examining an especially fine mount of a grouse in mid flight when a voice from behind him said, “One of Franz Ferdinand’s father’s trophies. Cousin Fritz came by his hunt-hunger honestly.” István spun around to see Archduke Rudolph seated in the chair by the door. He smiled, a strange, sleepy, not-quite-sane smile that raised the hair on István’s neck. “I trust your quarters meet your approval?”
“Yes, Your Grace. They are more than sufficient.” István remembered to bow.
“Good. I would recommend getting some rest, young Eszterházy. Tonight will be interesting. And after the storm passes? Interesting indeed.”
Thunder rumbled, almost at the edge of István’s hearing. Before he could start to panic, Rudolph laughed, a normal human laugh. “The storm’s a good twenty minutes or so away. You will hear it echo off the mountain and the hill to the south before it gets here. No magic, just lots of rock under thin trees. This area burned in the 1850s or so, that dry summer?”
“Ah, I think I recall grandfather talking about it, Your Grace. That was a fire year in the Matra as well, and what?” He tried to recall. “Wasn’t that when the shipping on the Danube stopped at Budapest and the Iron Gates because of the low water?”
“And they had cholera at Passau. My sister’s pet project is drainage, for reasons only known to Sts. Benedict and Scholastica.” Rudolph’s wry expression called an answering smile from István.
“My sister’s obsession is plants. You have my sympathy, Your Grace.”
“Thank you. If she keeps up her strange ways, I may have to come to you for advice. Or a drink.”
With that Rudolph departed, leaving István both mystified and more comfortable. Despite his lingering confusion and worries, he yawned. A nap would probably be a good idea. He washed up and then made use of the lumpy—but not bad—bed.
A servant tapped on the door shortly before seven that evening. “My lord Eszterházy, your presence is requested in the great room. If you would follow me please?”
István finished tying his shoes and followed. He’d worn practical clothes for the scramble up the mountain, and was relieved to see that the other men, and two women, had done the same. As he studied the other House Heads and heirs, a sense of wrong crept up on him. Something felt out of place, not quite as it should be. Only when Dowager Princess Windischgratz offered her hand to Janos did István realize what bothered him so: the ages of the people in the room.
Of his age group, only István and a woman introduced as Leona de Brixen were in attendance. He counted two Heirs and three Heads in their early twenties, terribly young to be leading Houses, and everyone else was at least fifty. Where were the twenty-five through forty-year-old House members? They’re at war, one way or another, István knew. St. Leopold and St. István have mercy on us. He stroked his St. István medallion. Leona, a broad shouldered woman who looked tired, seemed to reach the same conclusion. She shook her head. “It really should be my cousin attending this ceremony, not me.”
“But you are House Head?”
“No. I am Guardian. I should be in Brixen, but my uncle and cousin, Head and war lord, are busy fighting off the Italians. Things seem to be stable enough that I could come, but I feel out of place.” She looked around the room. “T
he war is eating us.”
“The Houses do seem to be bearing a heavy load,” István said.
“The House leadership,” an old man corrected. “The Houses have not seen anything yet, except for those in the Tirol or in Galicia.” He looked at the two youngsters and added, “It is much as I remember the years of Corsican upstart who called himself Emperor of the French.” Contempt dripped from his voice.
István asked, “Are there Houses in Galicia? I did not encounter any House members that I could identify when I was there with the army.”
The old man peered up at István and wrinkled his nose. “Only two, one originally from near Krakow, the other, eh, it was always a strange House, almost as backwards as the peasants around it. They claimed to have been there since just after the Mongols left, but,” he lifted one age-spotted hand and made a curling, twisting gesture, then opened his fingers as if scattering something. “They’ve not been heard from since 1913. They were a little close related, if you take my meaning.”
Lorna frowned. “Yes, sir, I do. We have some families, not House but living on House lands, like that. Mountain folk can be too insular for our own health, despite the church’s best efforts.”
“Indeed—” Whatever the man had intended to add was interrupted when they heard someone clap their hands three times.
“My lords and ladies,” a tall, broad-shouldered man with emerald-green eyes said. “It is time. The Heir will meet us at the appointed place.”
The group, roughly a score or so, sorted into two batches. The older and slower people departed first. Twenty minutes later, long enough for István to begin fidgeting, the others set out on the trail up the side of the mountain. The storm that had rumbled and danced through that afternoon had washed out the air, leaving damp leaves and a cool, sharp smell in the woods. A little water still dripped here and there. The clouds and slopes blocked the late summer twilight, casting the mountain into deep shadow even though light remained in the sky. István shifted a little so he could bring his better night vision to bear. The full human House Heads and heirs relied on their HalfDragon counterparts to warn them of surprises, like the large puddle near a boulder at a bend in the trail. “That’s not a puddle, that’s a damn pond,” the Dowager Princess snapped, picking her way around the edge. She only looked old and frail, as István was discovering. “Lake Balaton is smaller than that purported puddle.” She sniffed and strode on.
Almost half an hour of steady climbing along the narrow trail brought the group to a clearing and a cavern’s mouth. They’d reached a spur on the mountain flank, and through the dim light István could see the low stones of the old monastery, knee high at most, poking up through the lush grass. Four torches had been wedged into brackets on the face of the stone around the cavern’s maw, and cast flickering red light despite the still night air. Something fluttered past, a bat likely, and István lowered his shields a trace. He felt nothing: not a lack of people or Powers, but a positive void. What dwelled in the mountain? He was only one of several in the party to cross themselves and finger saint’s medallions or rosaries.
Then the group scattered out into a half circle facing the cavern as three men came down the trail from the mountain’s height. István guessed that the exhausted, damp man in the lead was Josef Karl Anton Wolfgang Leopold Marie von Habsburg-Lorraine-de Este. A man in clerical garb followed, while a pale younger man brought up the rear. No one bowed or saluted: until he passed the testing, Josef Karl had no rank in this assembly other than what courtesy granted. He hesitated at the edge of the group, bowed his head and crossed himself. He gathered his strength and strode into the half-circle, stopping with his back to the cavern, facing the men and women. The red light of the torches brought out red in his dark hair. He had a neatly trimmed dark mustache, good features, a broad forehead, strong hands, and liquid rose-gold eyes. They reminded István a bit of Prince Wetzel’s scales and he wondered if the two were related. “I am here.”
Dowager Princess Windischgratz stepped forward, along with a man István did not recognize. Rudolph also stepped into the half-circle, standing at his cousin’s right shoulder. “Do you come to the testing of your own free will?” the dowager asked.
“I do.”
As the questions and responses passed back and forth, Josef Karl seemed to grow. His voice deepened and he took on a gravitas, an air of determined but restrained power. István stood straighter as well, and could feel something swirling around the witnesses. Here stood the heart of the Habsburg Empire, the three kingdoms and Powers united in one person. One of the torches guttered and died, then a second. István didn’t move, entranced by the scene playing out before him in the growing darkness. At last the Dowager seemed satisfied, and she stepped backward, clearing the path for the tester.
The light of the remaining torch caught on the man’s scales and talons. What? István blinked, not certain he’d actually seen what he thought he’d glimpsed. Then the tester lifted a sword István had seen only once before, in the Imperial regalia. It was Charlemagne’s sword—though it may have been older than that still, and may have belonged to others before the Holy Roman Emperor—and the blade carried a sense of power and danger entirely separate from the arm of the man wielding it. “Is there any who have grounds for this man not to be tested?” a deep voice demanded.
Silence filled the clearing and cavern. Nothing, not even a cricket, moth, or bat, moved. The tester spoke again. “Josef Karl Anton, prove your worth.”
Rudolph stepped back a dozen paces or so, disappearing into the cavern’s black mouth. Josef Karl walked forward, eyes on the tester. The man held the blade out and Josef Karl knelt on the damp grass. His serene expression did not change as he leaned forward, his throat against the tip of the mighty sword. A drop of blood appeared, and at the tester’s nod, the heir to House Habsburg gave himself to the test, leaning forward against the blade. The pure power that rushed into the half-circle as he did pulled the breath from István’s lungs. Energy from the three Powers aligned with House Habsburg flowed into the new Head and War Lord, as did energy from the land and the larger House. How could Josef Karl survive, István wondered with the little bit of his mind not struck numb with awe.
He survives because of Rudolph. That was what Rudolph did: he buffered and tempered the raw power for his Head. István crossed himself. The Dowager and the pale young man, the witness for the House, pulled Josef Karl back and helped him get to his feet. “House Heads, his majesty Emperor Karl of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, Head and war lord of House Habsburg!” István and the others dropped to one knee in homage and fealty. Josef Karl took the sword from the tester and held it up to the night sky. The emperor almost glowed, to István’s eyes, from the power vested in him. Then the energy faded, leaving a very tired man standing alone in the clearing.
“You may rise.”
They did. Josef Karl returned the holy sword to the tester, who saluted and retreated into the darkness. “Come.” The emperor led the way down the mountain. István lingered, wondering about Rudolph. Where was he? István did not want to venture into the cave, but if Rudolph needed assistance . . . He looked from the cavern to the trail and back, hesitating.
«You are not needed,» the tester’s voice said in his mind’s ear. Too tired to spook, István bowed and followed the others down the trail.
If anything, the celebration following the accession was quieter than had been the House Dietrichstein gathering. Everyone wore black mourning tokens or garments, and Josef Karl sat in a comfortable, high-backed chair, accepting congratulations and condolences. When his turn came, István bowed low to the emperor.
“So you are the one my cousin thinks so highly of,” Josef Karl observed in unaccented Hungarian.
“Your Majesty.”
“Be well and the Grace of God go with you, Eszterházy István Joszef.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” István bowed lower and got out of the way, finding a chair of his own to sag into. For the last time, th
ose around the emperor ignored court protocols: the evening remained a gathering of near equals. After everyone had paid their homage and offered condolences to Josef Karl, the scent of food began trickling into the room, overpowering the smoke from the fireplace. The light supper revived István a little, but not much, and as soon as His Majesty gave permission, István, Janos, and the others returned to their rooms. Janos had dark rings under his eyes and reminded his son of one of the washing bears from North America. “Pater, are you feeling well?”
“Just tired. I fear I am out of practice climbing mountains in the dark.” He gave István a weary smile. “Stop hovering and go to bed.”
István saluted and did as ordered. As he started to move one of the pillows, paper crackled, and he discovered a card resting on the white sheets. It bore Archduke Rudolph’s seal, and the message “I will speak with you at eight tomorrow morning.” An ornate letter R, all swirls and tracery, closed the note.
Well, István might speak, but how coherent he’d be remained to be seen. He stroked his saint’s medallion and wished just then for a very stiff drink. An accession, a long hike, and Rudolph, all in twelve hours, are too much for even me. Then he tumbled into the bed, turned out the lamp, and slept without dreams.
István woke before the sun. Birds singing outside the open window startled him awake, and once he closed the window—well, he was awake. Who in their right mind put a seed platform outside the guest room window, he wondered as he washed a little before dressing. Probably some girl who thought it would be charming. Or someone lazy enough to want to hunt with pistol while remaining comfortably seated out of the rain and cold, like the late King Edward supposedly had. István finished the daily struggle of tying his tie and snorted with derision. He could imagine what House and Power both would do to him if he even suggested such a thing. And if they left anything salvageable, his father and the hunt-master would finish the job.