The Crystal Empire

by L. Neil Smith

  “Silence! This is childish hesitation, hysteria, brought about by her condition! We are man and wife!”

  “Sedrich!”

  The shout came this time from the house. “Sedrich, your father—”

  Rolling beneath the imprisoning foot, Sedrich seized the naked ankle of the distracted monk—Oln Woeck’s other bodyguard. He kicked upward, hard, his heel stopping in the man’s crotch. The side of his fist took the man’s knee. The joint crumpled with a crackling noise. Leaping to his feet, the young man brought one of them down upon the anguished face, hearing bone crackle again.

  He ran the well-worn pathway toward the sound of his mother’s voice.

  Ilse met her son as he pushed past her through the open door, wet soil dripping in his wake. In the room beyond, great Sedrich Owaldsohn lay sprawled in a chair, eyes blankly open, his head half shaven, the remaining lock already braided for mortal combat.

  He was dead.

  Before him, upon a low setee, lay Murderer, unsheathed and oiled. Rubbing wet and dirty hands on his scarcely cleaner breechclout, Sedrich swept the weapon up, unnoticing of its great weight. Time enough to mourn his father later, if he were still alive to—

  A sudden commotion arose behind him.

  Sedrich turned to see Hethri Parcifal push past Ilse into the room, seizing her copper staff. He pushed her against the heavy door. With an unearthly snarl, Willi leapt at Parcifal’s throat. He didn’t reach it. The sharp end of Ilse’s staff penetrated the dog’s body, slamming Parcifal against the wall, where he barely kept his feet. Willi fell, awkward with the weapon through his body, silent as his master.

  “No, Klem!” Sedrich shouted as the older dog advanced upon Parcifal. He strode forward. Almost unbidden, Murderer swept up in a glittering crescent, descending with all of Sedrich’s conscious strength behind it, cutting the screaming man at the collarbone, silencing his screams as it clove him to the waist, spilling him across the polished hardwood floor. The flesh which had been Hethri Parcifal fell over the furry inert form of the dog. Where it had been sundered, it steamed in torchlight coming through the door.

  Oln Woeck had followed to the house.

  Behind him, his remaining body-servant, eyes crossed with pain, was supported on his ruined leg by a pair of Brothers. Mindless fury filled the old man’s face, lashed by shadow and torchlight. Frae lay sobbing, propped upon one arm, at his feet, her long tresses still wrapped about his bony fist.

  “This day, young Sedrich, thou’st proven thyself twice a murderer, likewise many times a dabbler in forbidden art.” The Cult leader turned to address those behind him. “Our laws stateth not which is worse, but holdeth they’re the same. The punishment—”

  “You’ll do the being punished, Oln Woeck! You’ve killed my father!”

  Oln Woeck whirled to face the threat. A dozen men stepped between their leader and the young sword-wielder, armed with long, heavy staves. Where their robes fell clear of their bodies, Sedrich could see heavy muscles. Oln Woeck sighed, assuming an air of tired patience.

  “Be your father dead, ’tis of thy mischief. Now acceptest thou the judgment of thy fellowmen, Sedrich Sedrichsohn. The punishment for thy crimes is merciful. Moreo’er, ’tis voluntary—thou’rt to make the Choice.”

  One overzealous among Oln Woeck’s company stepped forward, leveling his staff at Sedrich. Almost unthinking, Sedrich sliced the man’s weapon in half with a short swipe of Murderer.

  The man stepped back.

  “The Choice?” Sedrich echoed. “The Choice ’tween what and what?”

  “’Tween exile,” intoned the old man, “from home, family, village, canton, to go where no man knoweth thy crime, and...”

  It wouldn’t do, thought Sedrich. His gentle Frae lay full upon the ground now, her sobs having given way to the ungentle sleep of failed strength.

  He must stay to fight this—

  “...and mutilation. The loss of the hand which hath offended us, as is the custom.”

  Sedrich blinked. “As once you did to Harold Bauersohn, the fletcher?”

  Oln Woeck grinned a skull’s grin. “’Twould end thy tinkering forever. Thou’d best be upon thy way, boy.”

  Sedrich stepped a measured pace to the doorway of his dead father’s home. Shifting the greatsword to his left hand, he spoke for all to hear. “Oln Woeck, you’re a liar. You’ll not escape such punishment as I’ve in mind for you. Let this be token of it!”

  Without further word, he slapped the doorframe with his right hand, swung the greatsword with his left. Oln Woeck’s eyes grew wide with shock. The blade bit deeply into wood as Sedrich’s hand parted from the wrist and fell into the mud.

  There was a gout of blood.

  He was surprised to feel no pain.

  Behind him, his mother screamed until a scarlet gossamer descended over his eyes.

  He lost consciousness.

  IX: Fire-Tithe

  “O unbelievers, I serve not what you serve....”—The Koran, Sura CIX

  “’Tis useless, Helga,” Ilse muttered, “we’ve lost her.”

  Sedrich awoke in black, furious confusion, senses sharpened like those of a hurt and hunted animal. What was this he overheard of losing her? His father, he remembered—with an agony not much less painful than being cloven by the greatsword Murderer—was dead, struck down by the shock and rage of what had been done to his only son. Willi, too, was gone, fierce, faithful Willi, he whom Sedrich had expected would outlive his own sire, Klem, by at least a decade.

  The next words which came to Sedrich bathed his heart in ebon flame. “And the child, Sister Ilse?”

  “Come two moons early, and no nurse to give it sustenance, e’en did it survive? I fear me ’tis but a matter of a few hours, good Helga. We’ve done our uttermost, thanks to you for your aid, but...what am I going to tell my son?”

  The neighbor-woman made clucking noises.

  Struggling to arise from where he lay, the young man took first note of his surroundings. He was in his parents’ chamber, lying on their great bed, the draperies so close-drawn he couldn’t tell the hour of the day. A pair of chimneyed oil-lamps burned before the mirror upon a dark, carven chest, throwing redoubled light, quadrupled shadows, about the room. He lay helpless, he discovered, unable to do more than lift his head, and this but feebly.

  The shadows writhed upon the walls.

  Gathering his strength—blackness boiled within him, driving out weakness—he tried again. A sharp, painful constriction across his chest caused him to think once more in anguish upon his father. Fears for himself were groundless: a rope had been passed round the bed to hold him down. Without thought, he reached toward the knot. He felt a tug against the motion, heard a clatter—

  —and remembered his right hand was gone.

  In its place, he wore a heavy bandage, reaching past his elbow. The ruined limb had been bound, likeliest by his mother, and suspended from its wrappings upon a nail, driven without care for the ornate bedstead from whence it hung, wrist uppermost, elbow down. He thought it odd that he felt but little pain. Perhaps that would come later. He could flex the fingers of his missing hand as if they still existed.

  Sedrich rolled, loosening the bindings with his left hand. He untied the rope holding him to the mattress. The ends fell to the floor, where they passed beneath the bed. Sitting up, he observed even these small efforts had not been without cost: a red stain had sprung forth upon his bandage, spreading. Sweat rolled down his cheeks, his forehead, trickling to the base of his neck.

  No matter.

  Setting bare feet upon the carpet, he arose, supporting himself upon one of the tall posts at the foot of the bed. After a time, he staggered across the room to the doorjamb, where he leaned, breathing. His breechclout, vest, and dagger lay upon the dresser, between the lamps. He realized for the first time that, save the dressings of his wound, he was naked. With a clumsy gesture, he swept up his possessions, making his way out through the open door.

  Waves of nausea
became Sedrich’s world for a nameless time. His journey along the short upper hallway, down the stairflight to the main floor, whence he’d heard his mother’s voice, he accomplished in a hazy dream. When he arrived, it was to a room rearranged almost beyond recognition. A fire blazed high in the three-sided hearth. Daylight outside—early morning, judging by the yellow light filtering through the snow-cloud overcast—filled the room with a sick, shadowless glare. Yet every lamp the family possessed, save the pair upstairs, shone bright.

  Furniture had been pushed out of the way, against the whitewashed walls, the great dining-table draped in linen white as the snow still falling outside the windows.

  Her eyes open wide, Frae lay, motionless and silent, upon the table.

  Blood was everywhere.

  Staggering across the room, Sedrich knew before he reached her that, whatever had animated this beloved face, those slim hands he knew so well, it was gone forever. At her side, he touched her still-warm cheek, bent to kiss her upon unmoving, waxen lips.

  “Sedrich!”

  Ilse Sedrichfrau, Mistress of the Sisterhood, looked up from where she sat beside the table, lifting her sweat-matted head from her blood-bespattered forearms.

  Helga Haroldsfrau slumped in a corner of the room by the great window, staring at the snowfall which concealed the ocean. She held a small, still bundle in her arms, crooning to it as tears streamed down her fat, care-weathered face.

  Sedrich felt no wish to examine what she held.

  “’Twas too early, too long in coming”—-Ilse sighed in weariness—”and little Frae too young to withstand it.”

  “What?” Sedrich had heard the words. Somehow they’d failed to carry any meaning to him.

  Pushing up from the table, his mother arose from her seat, a stool Owaldsohn had been used to prop his feet upon before the fire.

  She wiped stained hands along her robe-clad thighs.

  “’Tis the curse of our people, my son.” She spread a hand toward the table. “Birthing comes hard upon us—when it comes at all. E’en the Red Men, who know little of medicine or cleanliness outbreed us ten to one. Each year, methinks, our numbers dwindle a little.”

  Sedrich caught his mother’s eye and knew she was lying—or, at the least, attempting to distract him. If Frae were lost to him, what mattered any of this talk?

  The blackness inside him boiled and boiled.

  “Where,” he asked in a voice the evenness of which he marveled at, “is Oln Woeck?”

  “Sedrich, this is the blood-haze speaking, else you’d not e’en be standing up now upon your own. ’Tis rest you need, contemplation to control it, lest it take you o’er, kill you as it did your...” She stopped a moment. “...as it did your father. ’Twill do no one any good to take revenge now.”

  “Yes, Mother, my father—your husband—is dead. “’Twas not the blood-haze killed him either. My love is dead, and ere long—or thus I overheard you say to Helga—likewise the child she tried to bear me. Where is Oln Woeck?”

  Snow fell outside, quiet as a fall of feathers.

  “Gone south. ’Tis rumored, to confer with other Brotherhoods. But Sedrich, vengeance—”

  He raised what had been his right hand as if to stay her speech. This it did, with more effect than he’d anticipated. Realizing his nakedness once again, Sedrich slipped an armhole of his vest over his bandage. The wound had stopped bleeding. Never taking his eyes from his mother, he tucked the clout between his legs, awkward as he fastened the belt about his waist.

  “And Hethri Parcifal,” he asked, “Where is our good neighbor?”

  Ilse glanced at Helga, as if for support. The woman dozed now, her face still turned toward the window. When his mother turned back, there were terror and wonderment in her eyes.

  “He’s dead, Sedrich, by your own hand. D’you not remember?”

  “Yes. Now I do.”

  Sedrich crossed the few paces between himself and his mother. He bent, kissing her upon her graying hair. He turned for the door, taking naught save the dagger he still carried, stopping to lift Murderer from its pegs. Who had returned it to its place, he wondered.

  He tucked the small blade into his belt, slung the scabbard of the greatsword across his back, slanted for a left-hand draw. He didn’t know how he’d wield his father’s sword. It had been too much for him, in truth, even before he was a cripple.

  Ilse rushed to wrap a bearskin robe about him. Her eyes held an appeal she knew was useless and would not utter again.

  Sedrich paused in the doorway. “Aught I wanted, Mother—aught Frae wished for—was to be left alone. Oln Woeck wouldn’t grant us e’en this. Nor will he in the future, do I know him.

  “Revenge? Vengeance? I’ll give you a promise, Mother, strike a bargain. For in all the world, you’re aught I’ve left of what I love. Likewise I’m aught that remains of what you had. So certain am I that I know Oln Woeck, so sure am I that, even with all that’s come to pass he cannot rest till one of us is dead or has submitted, that, for the peace of your mind I’ll make you this pledge: I’ll not take Oln Woeck’s life till he comes to me, offering it.”

  A long speech, it was, for the young son of the blacksmith Sedrich Owaldsohn, even longer for the man he’d been forced, overnight, to become.

  No further word passed between them.

  Wind had swept the front garden clean of snow, heaping it against the picketing which surrounded it. At the end of the stone-flagged path, where it joined the village road, old Klem caught up with Sedrich, whistling in fierce supplication, wagging his tail.

  He’d not be left behind.

  Why not, thought Sedrich, why not let the old dog spend his last days as he wishes? ’Tis more than was given Frae and me!

  He rubbed the dog’s great head between the ears, thinking for the first time since regaining consciousness about the living Frae—not the pale mound of ashes, clay, and dust back there upon his mother’s blood-soaked table, but the living, breathing being whom he’d loved. Even through the furry pelt he wore, the wind was bitter cold—yet not enough to cool the roiling blackness deep inside him.

  Frae would have agreed with his mother, he thought, begging him to set aside this dark lust for revenge, approving of the promise—of the bargain—he’d made.

  Klem following, he left the pathway for the road, heading not south toward vengeance, but westward to oblivion.

  SURA THE SECOND: 1410-1418 A.H.

  The Agreement of Islam

  **

  “In the alternation of night and day, and what God has created in the heavens and the earth—surely there are signs...”

  —The Holy Koran, Sura X, Jonah

  X: Ayesha

  “And the king said, ‘I saw in a dream seven fat kine, and seven lean ones devouring them; likewise seven green ears of corn and seven withered. My counselors, pronounce to me upon my dream, if you are expounders of dreams.’

  ‘A hotchpotch of nightmares!’ they said. ‘We know nothing of the interpretation of nightmares.’

  Then said the one who had been delivered, remembering after a time, ‘I will myself tell you its interpretation....’”—The Koran, Sura XII

  As if its own teeth were not enough, a mountain wind whipped sand into her face.

  When her eyes ceased watering, her first thought was for her weapon—a reflex born of bitter experience. It had been conceived for harsh treatment, but there were limits. Their Enemy—whose weapon it had been only a few days before—was not the most exacting of manufacturers. Perhaps this was why he had come to steal from her people.

  At this moment, his objective was limited: to clear them from a strategic area. His ultimate goal, destruction of their homes, of the food they ate, the society they defended, could be accomplished piecemeal. He had discovered—as he shipped his dead home thousand by thousand—that he could not achieve it overnight.

  Pulling a rag-wrapped finger from the trigger-guard, she flipped a catch, tipping out a long, curved magazine. She drew t
he operation handle back until she could see a cartridge—one of fifteen she had left.

  The bolt moved with a gritty sound.

  Hers was an older weapon, of a decent caliber—not one of the little ones their Enemy had brought in later. This made her happy, although ammunition was becoming harder to obtain. When her people had captured enough new weapons, their Enemy would, in probability, begin importing a third, then a fourth. Laa thaghthaam, no matter. Weapons were easy enough to come by—take them from the dead Enemy.

  In the beginning, they had rejoiced at the childish ease with which these last could be produced, not thinking of endless numbers of slave-soldiers brought each day into their country to replace them. Now it was becoming clear that their Enemy would bury them beneath a mountain of his own conscripted dead if that was what it took to gain an upper hand. This sort of suicidal warfare was difficult for her people—slaves only to their God—to comprehend.

  And counteract.

  Today they would try again, her people. Information from the capital—relayed to them from one the Enemy believed reliable—was that he would be pushing many trucks through these hills, laden with supplies for a forthcoming winter offensive. Winter was a good time for their Enemy. Her people, limited to foot-travel, were bogged down by weather so bad it was renowned the world over. He could fly high above it or burrow through upon cleated treads.

  These trucks would be making for a supply depot, high in the mountains, well protected. They would travel behind a column of tanks, followed by armored troop carriers.

  Overhead, mechanical birds of prey patrolled a barren sky.

  They were not omnipotent birds, however. It was difficult for them to fly as high as the peaks to which her people climbed, from which they unleashed their own fury upon the vulnerable backs of the helicopters. Their Enemy knew that the machines which protected his column needed protection themselves.

  Thus, to these peaks he would send his best fighters—in flying machines straining at the limit of their capabilities—who would occupy advantageous positions until the supply column had passed, then jump to the next series of peaks, until the heavy-laden trucks had reached their destination.