“About the secretary?”
“More or less. Mostly less. Unlike the Holy Office, I make no unfounded accusations: those require proof and I have none. Obtaining it would be less than proper for a knight of this Order.” Hermann von Salza was a tolerant and worldly man, more so than a Grand Master should be, but he permitted himself a little smile at the prospect of assigning someone notoriously strait-laced like Kuno von Buxhövden to kick open doors after dark. Less than proper? he thought. It would probably be fatal, and not for Kuno.
“And too much trouble?”
“Peace, Albrecht. Cynicism doesn’t become you.” Von Salza took the last three steps at a stride and made for the library.
Von Düsberg followed again, looking disappointed. “Then if you can’t prove anything, what good is this letter?”
“Read for yourself.” Von Salza paused with his hand on the library door and drew a tightly folded sheet of parchment from his belt. “This is the rough draft. What His Holiness will see is rather more flowery, and rather less obvious. But the facts remain much as you see them.”
Albrecht waited until they were inside the library and the door had been closed behind him before he opened the sheet and studied it. The warning about it being rough was well-made because, although the Grand Master wrote a good book-hand, it was liberally spattered with blots, crossings-out and emendations. “‘My knights,’” he read, “‘are hard, rough men with no time for the soft language of court, and they relate what they see to what they know…’”
“And Father Arnald’s travelling-companion and secretary is a handsome young man,” said von Salza. “Extremely handsome, and disturbingly young. To the coarse eye, of which there are sadly too many in the world, he has so obviously the appearance of fulfilling other functions…”
“‘…that I grow concerned not merely for the good repute of the Holy Inquisition and the Dominican Order, but even that of the Church at large. If what my knights and sergeants have said is true, then something must be done and seen to be done, and if untrue then Father Arnald must be commanded to avoid provoking such speculation in the future.’”
“The fact,” said von Salza, “that he’s also puffed with self-importance only serves to make those he encounters think badly of him, regardless of how matters truly stand.”
“This is a bitter pill for anyone to swallow, Grand Master,” said Albrecht, folding up the parchment and giving it back.
“These will sweeten it.” Von Salza gestured towards the shelf where the books of magic had been racked like a conqueror’s trophies. “Even if they’re destined only for a locked closet somewhere in the Apostolic Chancellery.”
Neither of them had heard the door open, but they both heard it close, slammed shut with considerable force. Baba Yaga leaned against its timbers and scowled at the Grand Master. “You dare send my books to Rome?” she said.
Von Salza raised his eyebrows. The witch’s insolence never ceased to amaze and sometimes amuse him, but today he found it just an irritation, like one of her lice. “Your books? I said before, no such arrangement was made with me.”
“Then I’ll take it up with Constable Balke,” Baba Yaga snapped, “and until he returns, these books stay—”
There was a sound like the crack of a huge whip, and for a moment von Salza thought Baba Yaga had worked some crafty sorcery to spirit away her books; but she looked as startled as the two knights, and the grimoires were still on their shelf. Something touched his face with cobweb delicacy, and he automatically wiped at the irritation. Albrecht von Düsberg made a tiny, choked whimpering noise and stared at him in horror.
Von Salza’s hand felt sticky. He glanced at it and felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach, because there was a smear of blood from palm to fingertips. He looked about wildly and saw everything in the library misted with a fine beading of blood: books and chairs, floor and walls, Albrecht’s and his own white robes. The smell of it began to fill the air. But where…?
“The wall…” moaned von Düsberg. “Oh, dear merciful God, look at the wall…” He started to be sick.
Hermann von Salza had his long sword halfway drawn by the time he swung around, and the blade rattled against its scabbard as a monstrous shudder lurched through him. Dieter Balke was staring at him out of one eye from halfway up the wall. A fat tear squeezed from Balke’s eye and down the bricks, making a streak through the film of blood that covered it. Half of his mouth was still free. The other eye, the rest of his head and most of his body save for the tips of three fingers, were all inside the brickwork. And he was alive.
“Help me,” he begged in a voice that dripped and slobbered. Nauseated, von Salza stared up, unwilling to use the sword that was the only help he could give, but unable to sheathe it while the, the thing still lived to see him do it. “For the love of God, please help m—”
The wall quivered like something seen through a haze of heat, and all the cohesion of its structure that the Gate spell had disrupted was abruptly, completely restored. It became solid again, without man-shaped, man-filled cavities, and gore bubbled from between the joints of the bricks. Three fingertips dropped away and pattered on the floor, but the half-face adhered briefly; then it slithered down, leaving a trail of bloody fluid as though it was some ghastly slug.
Revolted, von Salza shut his eyes, then wished he’d thought to block his ears from the sound it made as it finally struck the floor. He turned away from what had been the Landmeister of Livonia and stared at Baba Yaga. If she said anything he would kill her, but even the witch was struck silent by what had happened. Von Düsberg had fainted.
“It seems,” said the Grand Master, breathing hard to suppress his heaving stomach and deliberately choosing a subject that had nothing to with what lay behind him, “you must take the matter of the books up with me after all. And I say you may not have them.”
Baba Yaga’s lips curled back from her ragged teeth. Balke’s death was already forgotten, unimportant next to her own desire. “Is that your last word?” she hissed.
Von Salza raised his sword and rested its blade on his shoulder, tact and even caution swallowed up by anguish and rage. “It is.”
The witch turned as if to go, reached out to the door – and shot the bolt an instant before she rounded on von Salza with her hand outstretched and the fingers spread like hooks.
“Then I’ll have your heart instead!” The Grand Master made to swing his sword and take that hand off at the wrist, but a huge pain exploded inside his chest and the weapon clashed harmlessly away as he clutched at a chair for support. Baba Yaga croaked a laugh. “I knew this spell was fast enough,” she said. “You didn’t, because last time you didn’t see me use it that way. But it can be slower still, Grand Master von Salza. Shall I show you how slow it can be?”
She moved one joint of one finger, and von Salza felt the wrenching of that movement as though the finger’s nail was buried in his heart. Sweat burst out all over his body, and he ground his teeth together until the hinges of his jaw crackled with the strain, determined not to give Baba Yaga the satisfaction of hearing him scream.
“No point in that,” she said, walking close enough to him that the charnel reek of her breath penetrated even the agony. “They always scream eventually. Ask your inquisitor, or better, ask his pretty little friend.” Her finger moved again, ripping him inside—
And then the pain stopped, and von Salza almost collapsed.
He tried to draw himself upright before it began again, but the look in Baba Yaga’s eyes had changed. No longer narrowed with hatred and the joy of killing, no longer leering at his face the better to enjoy his agony, they were staring over his shoulder and bulging further from their sockets than he would have dreamed possible. Von Salza had watched men at the stake after the fires were lit, seen them dragged greased and screaming to a blunted spear-shaft sunk into the ground, and not even they had looked so terrified.
The specks of black and glowing purple cleared from inside his ey
es, and he could see how some huge light behind him was throwing his shadow across the floor and wall, as stark and black as if cut from silk. The clamour of his own outraged heart faded from his ears, and Hermann von Salza heard a voice, a hiss like flame granted the power of speech. It was behind, above, all around him. Like the light, it was everywhere.
“No cage this time, Baba Yaga. Say farewell.”
The Grand Master had seen the Firebird in its cage and had been amazed, even in its confinement, at its size. Now he realized just what a size that truly was. He could feel no heat, only a swirling in the air as huge wings spread out to either side, spanning the library from wall to wall. They beat just once, then closed as the Firebird stooped.
Von Salza knew he should look away: everything from horror to nausea to simple decency told him so. But he watched, fascinated, as unable to close his eyes or turn his head as the merest rabbit cornered by a stoat.
Baba Yaga died.
Not slowly, for von Salza watching. Not quickly, for Baba Yaga in the Firebird’s claws. But quietly at least, save for the thunder of the flames.
She died in silence, even though her mouth gaped wide and wider still, for the howling column of fire that gathered her into its embrace had eaten out her lungs before the shriek was formed. She went black as her skin and flesh and fat were roasted into charcoal, and she went white as the burnt meat whirled up in greasy smoke from calcined bones, and she went grey as all that remained became a wisp of ash and stink and dry, dry dust.
The Firebird hung on empty air as what was left of Baba Yaga drizzled from its clenched talons, then turned its head towards the shelf of grimoires and screeched in triumph. The sound went through von Salza’s ears to his brain, defying him to make some attempt to stop it. Instead he backed away until a chair struck him behind his knees and he sat down heavily. The Grand Master knew he would stay there until the Firebird had gone, and he wouldn’t do anything else. He could feel the pain in his heart with every beat, and he felt very tired, and he knew he didn’t want to die as Baba Yaga had just died.
The Firebird opened its wings still wider, mantling like a falcon over its stricken prey, and though the number of things on that shelf should have made the task impossible, it gathered up every one of them. Then it looked at von Salza one last time with its curved beak gaping in a hiss of laughter, and was gone.
The sound of the pulse in his ears was the sound of the clock of his life, and it was running down. Hermann von Salza, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, sat hunched like an old, old man with his hands pressed tightly to his chest, not caring that those hands shook as if with palsy. The half of Dieter Balke’s face that could still be recognized stared up at him from a puddle of bloody slime on the floor, and because of the way loose skin had been dragged out of place as that half-face came sliding down the wall, its expression was a sneer.
Have you lost your zeal and stomach for the Crusade, Grand Master? it seemed to say, in the harsh, brutal words that only Dieter Balke would dare to use to his Grand Master. Has the sight of dying and the threat of your own death suddenly become so foreign? Can this be the same Hermann von Salza who tied Saracen prisoners to live pigs and burnt them two by two at the hours of prayer, so we broke the siege of Kerak in a week and the Templars stood amazed? Have I died for nothing…?
“No.” Von Salza’s voice was no more than a whisper, but his fingers flexed on the arms of the chair until the knuckles turned white, and he heaved himself back onto his feet with a surge of effort that made him stagger. “By God and Mary, no!”
Fists had been pounding on the door for a long time now, ignored and all but unnoticed. Von Salza took three reeling steps and wrenched back the bolt so abruptly that Kuno von Buxhövden all but fell inside. The Hauskomtur had a drawn sword in his hand, but it sagged until the point clinked against the floor as he took in the carnage in the library.
“These are my orders,” said Hermann von Salza, paying its abattoir appearance no more heed than if the place had simply been untidy. “An escort of two knights and ten sergeants will take the inquisitors to Rome. A sergeant will help Brother von Düsberg to the infirmary. The rest will come with me.”
Von Buxhövden gaped; von Salza’s commands were never so simple and direct. Then reflex took over. “As your command, Grand Master!” He summoned up enough composure to sheathe his sword, then cleared his throat. “Er…Where are we going?”
Von Salza gave him a smile as bright and fragile and as near to shattering as porcelain. “To Russia, Kuno, or to Hell. As you can see from the mess—” he glanced at it and laughed a tinkling little laugh as though the porcelain had broken at last, “—our attempt to be subtle didn’t work. So it’s time to use our swords…”
CHAPTER TEN
The Summer Country;
The Kremlin of Tsar Vyslav Andronovich
With the memory of Dieter Balke’s unfinished squawk of horror still in his head, Ivan refused under any circumstance to return to Khorlov through a Gating circle. Mar’ya Morevna hadn’t tried to change his mind. She knew her husband’s moods by now, though keeping up with them had sometimes been a problem and this obstinate streak was as inflexible as a bar of steel. Instead she spent most of the day talking to the Firebird.
Ivan didn’t really care one way or the other, just so long as Gates weren’t involved. He had enough to think about in any case, for the kremlin doctors who had patched up his ribs – unbroken, they said, through some minor miracle – had also advised him he would be in ‘some discomfort’ for the next few days. They meant only to reassure him, but Ivan was familiar with the style of understatement practiced by doctors and knew from experience what that discomfort would feel like.
He’d been right; the bruised bones and muscles hurt when he moved, and when he was still; also when he stood, sat, lay down, ate, drank or went to the privy. He could have tolerated all of that, had it not also hurt with a most particular small twinge every time he breathed and typically didn’t trouble him when he didn’t.
“If it was something else I could actually stop doing,” he complained to the Grey Wolf while they sat together in the sunshine, “then I think it might be bearable.”
“You could stop breathing,” said the Grey Wolf unhelpfully. “You very nearly did. I saw that knight swing his mace at you, and he didn’t just mean to knock the dust out of your clothes.”
Ivan grimaced: he’d been hoping for sympathy. Mar’ya Morevna had said much the same thing, and had also refused to work a Healing on his ribs. Her reasons were sound enough: a sorcery worked in the Summer Country on someone not of the Summer Country might unravel like bad weaving when out of the Summer Country; also, the sort of enchantment wanted didn’t work as well on bruises as when closing cuts and punctures, ‘like a needle and thread, but quicker’, as she put it; and because of the soundness of those reasons, he should wait till they went home.
With so much of it around, it was a pity that sound reasoning didn’t ease aches and pains.
“And bring that thing with you,” she had said almost as an afterthought, with a speculative look in her eye that suggested what Ivan privately called Oh God not another good idea. Dieter Balke’s mace had been resting on his shoulder at the time. He’d picked it up just after the fight had ended and carrying it about with him hurt of course, like everything else, yet he intended to keep it as a souvenir. But not to use; Ivan had a mace of his own hanging with all his other war-gear in the Armoury Tower, a light, handy, well-balanced weapon without the foul associations that made Balke’s feel like it was coated in rancid fat.
Vyslav Andronovich had also expressed a pointed wish that he take the ugly thing away, and Ivan had a feeling the Tsar would be glad to see the mace, the Firebird, the Grey Wolf and all the rest of them get out of his kremlin. There was no surprise about that: reports were still coming in of the trouble they had indirectly caused by being the reason for Dieter Balke entering the Summer Country, and the ruin of Vasilisa Kurbit’yevna’s hunting
lodge had been only the worst of it.
It all suggested to Ivan that there might indeed be such a thing as luck, despite Mar’ya Morevna’s profession otherwise. Landmeister Balke had shown a talent for destruction matched only by the Tatars, and by rights his mace should have knocked Ivan’s head off in the first exchange of blows. ‘Being saved for something’, had been Sivka’s view, between mouthfuls of oats. Whether that something was better, worse or just more interesting, Prince Ivan was in no hurry to learn.
The Grey Wolf sat up, his big triangular ears pricked towards some sound that Ivan had missed. “I think we’re leaving,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Instinct.” White fangs gleamed in a lupine grin. “Also hearing Mar’ya Morevna declare that this time not even you can complain about the route she and the Firebird will be taking back to Khorlov.”
“Oh, indeed? Let me be the judge of that.” Ivan put his head back and let the sunshine of the Summer Country warm his face. If the Grey Wolf was right, it might be his last chance until summer returned to the wide white world of home. He didn’t care. The brooding presence of winter made summer, when it came, all the brighter, warmer, merrier, and that pleasure, small and gentle as it might be, was missing in a place where there was no winter at all and the three remaining seasons blurred into one. When he had first ridden into the Summer Country, Ivan had been only half-joking when he’d wanted to stay. Now he knew he wasn’t joking at all in wanting to leave.
Mar’ya Morevna emerged into the sunlight with the Firebird’s perch in one hand, and the Firebird on the other wrist like some impossibly huge falcon. From the ease with which she was carrying them, neither the bird nor its perch-of-honour were as heavy as they looked. “Whenever you’re ready,” she said. “Vyslav Andronovich has had the pattern prepared and the mirrors set up in the kremlin square.”
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