by D. J. Butler
“They are,” Thalanes agreed. “There’s Eldritch blood in most tribes, and a few tribes have quite a bit of it. Such as the Lenni Lenape. And of course, some people have gifts and vulnerabilities that defy explanation.”
“Huh,” Sarah said.
“Do you know your mother, then?” the Cetean priest asked. “Is she Shawnee?”
“I reckon that’s personal, monk,” she rebuffed him. “Lessen you want to tell me about your mother first.”
“Did your mother also give you your lily white complexion, as white as mine, as white as any Moundbuilder’s?”
Sarah was stunned. She wished she could shut the monk’s mouth, but a part of her—more than a small part—found him making sense. She never had met her mother, and had just taken it on faith from her father that she was an Indian. And silver did blister her skin on prolonged contact. Sarah deepened her scowl.
“I know what comes after twelve,” she said stubbornly.
The barb only made him chuckle. “And did your manifest talent at hexing come from your Indian mother, too?”
“My pa’s the Elector,” Sarah insisted, and then she decided to shut the monk up with a lie. “My mamma’s Shawnee, lives a ways down on the Cumberland.”
He shook his head patiently, his smile looking like an amused frown. “Why do you feel you must dissemble, Sarah?”
“Don’t know what you mean,” she dissembled.
He laughed out loud and then fell silent.
They had passed the farms now, and Sarah relaxed slightly. The highway was Imperial territory, of course, but fifty feet off it to either side was now Calhoun land. She expected His Imperial Majesty Thomas Penn probably did have officers somewhere who would be willing to try to exert their authority in Calhoun territory—his Foresters, maybe—but it wouldn’t be any of the boys in Nashville. She looked at Cal, expecting to see him looking calmer, too, but he had an expression on his face that combined astonishment, wariness, fear, and…something else. Hope, maybe, though that seemed an odd emotion for the circumstances.
They overtook Young Andy with the cart and the younguns, and he delivered his report. “I never did hear you give the signal, Aunt Sarah, there was so much noise. I heard the gunshot, all right, and I reckoned it was time to pull that ol’ tent down, so we done it. One pull.”
He handed Cal the lariat and grinned, looking for Sarah’s approval.
She gave it to him. “Well done, Andy. You done fine.”
“You decide to bring this feller home?” Andy pointed at Thalanes. “I reckoned him for a foreigner.”
“He is a foreigner.” Sarah glared at the monk. “He’s from a country called Grinland, where they ain’t got but the one facial expression and everybody dies of boredom.”
“You a Wanderin’ Johnny?” Andy asked the monk.
“The Poor Disciples of St. John Gutenberg do an important work,” Thalanes said, smiling again. Damn fool. “I’m not one of them. I’m a storyteller. May I tell you a story?”
“How about a song?” Young Andy suggested instead.
“Do you know your Elector Songs?” Thalanes asked with a smile.
“He loves those Elector Songs,” Sarah grumbled.
Young Andy shot a sidelong glance at Cal and blushed. “How about Cal sings something?”
“I think I’ve had jest about enough of the Elector Songs for the day, though,” Cal said. “What iffen I sing ‘O Listen, Ye Fathers’?”
A couple of the younguns hooted. “That’s a song about the emperor,” Andy told the foreigner.
“Believe me, I know,” the monk said, his mouth a flat line.
Cal unleashed his fine tenor voice and sang:
The first time I saw him was in eighty-one
We rode the Ohio, with sword and with gun
The Serpents would see him, they’d turn and they’d run
One flash of his saber, the battle was won
O listen, ye fathers, from far and from near
Ye’d best hide your daughters, Lord Thomas is here
There never was fairer a lord among men
He was stout with his saber and bold with his pen
And the ladies would follow, o’er moor and through fen
For one look at the locks of fair Thomas Penn
O listen, ye fathers, from far and from near
Best lock up your daughters, Lord Thomas is here
Cal stopped, a bashful look on his face. “It’s got a nice tune. And it’s kind of a love song.”
“It ain’t a love song,” Sarah disagreed.
“Kind of,” he repeated.
“I love history,” Young Andy said.
“Is that what that song is?” Thalanes asked. “History?”
Sarah wondered whether he might be offended. “Sorry,” she said.
Thalanes waved off her concern.
Young Andy was undeterred. “And I might could tell you a story. Do you know the tale about how the archwizard Sir Isaac Newton defeated the Necromancer”—he spit over his left shoulder—“at the Second Battle of Putney? Not to mention Black Tom Fairfax, the Sorcerer Hooke and their legions of marching dead?”
Calvin knuckled Andy gently on the arm. “Don’t spit.”
Young Andy was showing off for the other younguns, but none of them acknowledged his excellence—they continued to rattle and gripe at each other in a hubbub just a few notches short of an outright brawl.
“I do,” the monk said, and Sarah warmed to him a little for taking Young Andy seriously. “He worked mighty weather gramarye and flooded the Thames, washing out his pontoons and splitting Cromwell’s New Model Army in two. Make no mistake, though, it was John Churchill’s mixed pikemen and musketeers that then smashed Cromwell’s forces in Kensington, including the Lazars, and forced the Lord Protector to surrender. Wizards can’t do everything all by themselves, even powerful ones.”
“And everyone knows John Churchill had to git help from dark powers, hisself,” Young Andy supplied cheerfully. “His men were the Unbaptized. He turned England back pagan.”
“Exceptin’ the Duchy of Monmouth,” Sarah pointed out.
“Yeah, But the rest of it went back to blood sacrifice and druids, to beat the Necromancer.” Young Andy spit over his shoulder again.
This time Cal knuckled him hard. “I said stop it, Andy!”
“You want the Crooked Man to git me?” Young Andy asked.
“The Crooked Man ain’t gonna come git you jest on account of you mentionin’ some evil power,” Cal explained. “And iffen he was, I don’t reckon spittin’ at him would help you much.”
Andy hung his head.
“Now that tale is history,” Thalanes said to Young Andy. “Your knowledge is impressive. May I tell my story now?” The compliment was generally jeered at by the younguns.
Andy, both proud and abashed, agreed that he could and settled into a comfortable listening lope. Sarah watched the monk’s face closely as he gathered his thoughts; his expression was both remote, as if he were trying to remember the tale, and at the same time deeply mournful, as if it were a story the pain of which he could never forget.
“Once upon a time…” Andy prompted him.
“No,” Thalanes contradicted him. “No, not once upon a time. ‘Once upon a time’ means fairies under mushroom caps and trolls in the hills, and this story happened in a time of gunpowder and three-masted sailing ships. It took place…let us say for now that it took place a few years ago.
“A few years ago, a powerful king rode his bounds. A king must travel, you know, to be seen by his people and to see them, and in particular a king must travel the border of his kingdom, to maintain its integrity, to know his lands and to pray for their blessing.
“This king was a wizard also.” The monk met Sarah’s gaze. “He was Firstborn, and the lord of one of the Ohio kingdoms. And he was married to a queen of another land, an empress, and together they were wealthy and powerful and loved, but they had no children.
�
�They were loved by most, but not by all. The empress had a brother, who thought the empire should be his, and so he hated his sister and even more he hated her husband, because he was a stranger and he was Eldritch and because he sat upon the imperial throne as the empress’s consort. Do you know what a ‘consort’ is?”
The question was directed at Young Andy, but Sarah intervened. “It means he was the empress’s husband, but he wasn’t the emperor. She stayed in charge.”
“Very good,” Thalanes murmured. “So the king rode the bounds of his kingdom, away in the west, with a few chosen companions and his personal troop of soldiers for his defense. And one terrible night, there was a grave accident, and the king was left wounded and dying.
“The king couldn’t be saved by all the art of his companions—his wounds were too terrible—but he didn’t die immediately. As he lay bleeding, he saw that he was sheltered under an oak tree, and he asked that three acorns be brought to him. He instructed his companions to take the acorns to his wife the empress, and then with his own blood and his dying breath he anointed them and pronounced upon them his blessing.”
“Ewww,” Andy said.
“His companions buried him and they returned to the empress. She grieved, tearing her dress and shattering her crown upon the floor. Her brother shut her away her and pronounced her mad. An election was called, and her brother came to sit upon the Imperial Throne.”
“Mad Hannah,” Sarah said, almost whispering. For the first time, she felt sad for the broken empress whose death notice she had read that morning. “And so the king must have been her husband, the Imperial Consort Kyres Elytharias.”
“Who’s that?” Young Andy asked.
“He was a sort of knight, I reckon,” Calvin offered.
“Like a Teutonic Knight?” Andy asked. “Like a Savoyard, fighting the Turk?”
“King of Cahokia,” Thalanes said. “The Lion of Missouri. He belonged to an order called the Swords of Wisdom. Some of them fight the Turk, but they fight many enemies.”
“Well, that explains all the crazy acorn nonsense.” Even as he thoughtfully digested this story, Andy shifted from one foot to the other and couldn’t stop moving. “I always heard the Kings of Cahokia was wizards, and they don’t know how to count to eleven.”
“Thirteen, you mean,” Sarah told him.
“Do I?” Young Andy was confused. “All I recollect is as they count in twelves, not in tens.”
“That don’t seem right,” Calvin said. “A man’s got ten fingers, in Nashville and in the Ohio both.”
“True,” Thalanes admitted. “The question is, because man has ten fingers, should he look around him and force everything else into systems counted by ten? Or should he look for order in the world around him, and number things as God has numbered them in the cosmos…for instance, by twelves?”
“It’s man as has dominion over the beasts,” Sarah grumbled. “If horses could count, I reckon maybe they’d do it by fours.”
“Twelve houses of the zodiac,” the monk pointed out. “Twelve points of the compass. Twelve months of the year.”
“Months are made up,” Sarah said. “They could jest as easily be ten, or thirty, or two, or no months at all. Same for points of the compass.”
“Twelve cycles of the moon to each cycle of the sun, then.”
“Not exactly.”
“Anyway, that ain’t the way I heard the story,” Cal observed.
“No,” the monk agreed, “it is not. You heard that the Empress Hannah went insane and was immured for her own good. By her brother, Thomas Penn, who rides the Ohio with his flashing sword and his irresistibility to women.”
Cal looked embarrassed. “Yeah, I guess that’s jest about what I heard of the matter. And I heard Cahokia ain’t had a king since. It’s been under the Pacification.”
“Also at the hand of the Emperor Thomas Penn.”
“Bonuses paid for friend recruited!” one of the younguns chimed in, and Young Andy elbowed him aside.
“Crown’s lost and all,” Cal added more soberly.
“The crown and the other regalia of the kingdom. Things of power.” Thalanes let a silence settle for a few moments before he continued. “The consort’s companions delivered the acorns to the empress. Alone with a few trusted servants in her Philadelphia cage, she treasured those seeds of the mighty oak. She carried them about on her person, she caressed them, spoke and sang to them as if to children, and even gave them names.
“And then, one day, she ate them.”
“So she really was mad.” Sarah felt both revulsion and compassion.
Thalanes ignored her. “The empress conceived. Do you know what ‘conceived’ means, Andy?”
Andy snickered. “It means a sow and a boar make shoats. ’Round these parts, conceivin’ is one thing we know all about. I’m from a litter of seven myself, and Calvin there is the oldest of nine. Sarah, what are you, the Elector’s thirteenth, ain’t you? Some folks reckon thirteen’s a bad luck number, and that explains Sarah’s eye.”
Thalanes shook his head and laughed. “I don’t think the number thirteen explains Sarah’s eye at all. Nor do I think she’s bad luck. Nor do you, the way you take her lead.”
“I reckon not,” Andy agreed affably.
Sarah found herself warming to the little priest again. She steeled her heart.
“The empress conceived,” the monk went on. “And in time, she bore three children—triplets.”
“Conceived of who?” Andy asked. “I know it’s the woman as conceives, but she conceives of somebody, most generally a man, or she don’t conceive at all. The king was dead, right?”
“It’s just a story,” Sarah objected.
“She conceived of the acorns, apparently,” Thalanes explained.
Cal whistled low. “Are you tellin’ us this is a true tale?”
“The children were born…marked. Disfigured, some would say. They were taken at birth by loyal servants. They were ridden to far corners of the empire and hidden, and nothing was said of their birth to the new emperor.”
“It figures an oak whelp couldn’t e’er be normal,” Andy reasoned. “Did they have little barky caps with stems on their heads? Hard, shiny faces?” His grin made it clear he had decided not to take this story seriously.
Thalanes walked in silence.
“Then what?” Cal asked. “Is that the end? That don’t sound like the end of no story to me.”
“Years passed. The empress believed she was dying, and longed to know more of her children,” the monk continued slowly. “Of the three loyal servants, only one had returned, her dead husband’s chaplain and father confessor and now her confessor also, and she importuned him for information. In his weakness, he finally succumbed. He told her only about one child, the oldest, the one he had hidden. He told the empress where he had placed the child, and he told her about the baby’s mark. The empress’s oldest child was born with one eye swollen shut and inflamed, and in all the time the father confessor had traveled with the baby, that eye had never healed or opened.”
“She had a witchy eye, then. Was it much like Sarah’s?” Young Andy wanted to know.
“Yes,” Thalanes replied. “It was just like Sarah’s.”
There was a terrible, terrible silence.
“That still ain’t the end of any story,” Cal repeated.
“No, it ain’t,” Sarah jumped in, “but it’ll have to do for now. Time to leave the emperor’s road.”
Turning the cart was no complicated operation and didn’t particularly require special attention, but Sarah wanted to end the story. The rest of the Calhouns took her lead and didn’t press Thalanes for any more of the tale. She felt the monk’s eyes resting heavy on her as she took the mule’s lead rope and walked it off the Pike onto a narrow dirt track.
“Sorry,” Calvin said to the little monk. “I didn’t mean any offense, I’s jest singin’.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” Thalanes put his hand on
Calvin’s arm. “I like the song, too. Many great songs have words that are pure nonsense.”
They followed the trail into the woods, beginning to turn orange and yellow, and then up as the land rose beneath them and the path became the knife edge of a steep, forested ridge. The track was wide enough for the cart, but only barely.
The younguns resumed their jostling and Sarah wondered about Calvin, and about the monk. Cal was not a man of many words at any time, but he was normally conversational, and now he was sunk in a thoughtful silence. Was he feeling rueful, or embarrassed at his song choice? She smiled at him to show her support. When she caught his eye, he smiled back at her, but shyly.
That look made Sarah feel queer and uncertain of herself.
As for the monk…he seemed kind, but he was a foreigner and a painfully nosy one at that. He cared way too much about Sarah’s personal affairs, and the whole deformed-acorn princess story struck her as a ridiculous lie aimed to make her feel self-conscious.
Which she refused to do.
The ridge ended where the crown of the hill began; the track ahead rose up through a narrow stone canyon, leading up to the forested cap of the mountain.
Cal whistled, loud, hyoo-hyoo-hyoo-whee-up, a sort of birdcall that belonged to no bird but served as a recognition sign, and three young Calhoun men appeared, each casually carrying a long rifle. One slipped into view out a crack in the canyon wall ahead and two faded from the woods. They all wore the hunting shirts and breeches of Appalachee men.
“What you got there, Auntie Sarah?” one of them called, strolling from the trees. “That feller don’t look like no Calhoun to me.” He spat a squirt of brown tobacco juice into the leaves.
“I’m a friend,” Thalanes said immediately.
Young Andy took the lead rope and continued to drag the mule and cart uphill, younguns bouncing all around him like kernels of popping corn, while Sarah and Calvin stopped with the monk.