A horsefly stung his eyelid, and he beat at it with a cry of rage and frustration. The insects sought flesh with an evil-minded obsession. Beatriz stumbled from the bed, beating at herself, and knocking cups and bundles of herbs from a tray on the floor in her haste.
Ramiro dived for the ground and scooped up the wooden tray with the intention of putting it across part of the window. A vain idea. He swung the platter as he went like a fan and where the surface struck flies, the insects fell dead by the hundreds.
“The tray!” Teresa screamed from the doorway as she did her own macabre dance. “Keep swinging it!”
Every puff of air from the tray—the very ordinary and normal tray reacting in a most unordinary way—sent more horseflies tumbling to the dirt floor to lie broken and crushed. Ramiro hurried to his mother and fanned the platter around her. Insects fell in a rain of black bodies to cover the ground whether touched by the tray or air fanned from it. The wooden surface grew warm under his fingers. He used both hands to sweep the tray in great arcs. Flies stopped entering through the window and instead exited in droves. He slapped at a last sting on his wrist as the room went silent, except for wheezing breaths and a few struggling flies with the same unnatural red eyes, buzzing weakly on their backs.
“What the hell!” Ramiro panted, holding the tray in a death grip. “What the hell!” His skin roiled with revulsion. Beatriz scrubbed at her face, spreading blood from welts. Julian straightened slowly from where he tried to gather the mattress from the floor. All of them stared at the tray and then slowly raised their eyes to look at Ramiro.
Ramiro held the tray at arm’s length, though it looked perfectly ordinary, unchanged except for smears of fly. Just some thin and cheap boards glued together with a simple border tacked around it and a brown varnish applied unevenly. The hair rose on the back of his neck.
“What was that?” Julian demanded.
Telo staggered in the door, crushing horseflies under his sandals. “The Lord isn’t the only power watching. It seems miracles draw unwelcome attention.”
Ramiro glanced at the empty window and the sunlight streaming inside. “Dal. He works by daylight, but he couldn’t strike at us inside—yet. Buildings give some sort of protection.”
“So he found another way,” Teresa finished.
“If this Dal cannot work by night or inside, then we leave as soon as it is dark,” Julian announced. “Maybe it knows our location only and not our identities. Moving might hide us from it.”
“Sancha,” Ramiro said, panic rising again. “I have to check on her and the boys.”
“Don’t go outside,” Beatriz called, but he was already out the thin slit of a window and running to the stable.
He didn’t know if barns counted as walls, but he’d damn well find out. The eyes crawling across his back might have been Dal or his imagination as he reached the stable without incident. Boys sitting on piles of hay and cleaning tack looked up at his hurried entrance. Saddle straps fell into the straw as they took in the blood on his face and neck and the way he clutched a dinner tray to his chest like a shield.
“You need your saddle, sir?” asked the boy he’d met earlier, uncertainty in his voice.
“No. Not yet.”
A dozen or more horses of chestnut or deep brown regarded him over their stall doors. No whites showed around their eyes. Sancha nodded her dapple-gray head, perfectly calm and unharmed.
“No flies in here?” he asked the boys.
“Flies, sir? There’s always flies. No more than usual.”
Embarrassment crept over him. He must look a lunatic, bleeding from dozens of bites and all frantic. He tucked the tray under his arm, wondering if it was a kitchen tool again or still something more. “Carry on then. We’re leaving tonight, so you might get ready. Oh, and stay inside unless you absolutely must go out. Consider that an order, soldiers. Don’t even stick your head outside.”
“Yes, sir.” Concern turned to pride on their young faces. They might not understand, but they’d obey someone who treated them as adults.
He returned to the monastery in the usual way, through the door, knowing the flies had been no random attack. The insects would have had a much easier time getting into the stable if they were only after blood. Ramiro considered the tray under his arm. Thankfully, something else seemed to be on their side.
But if miracles drew instant retaliation, should they hope for more?
Which force would prove the stronger? He very much feared he was soon going to find out firsthand.
Chapter 6
Clouds—perhaps heralding the long-withheld summer rains—obscured the moon and stars. They robbed the world of light and rendered Julian’s four companions, walking beside him, as vague shadows. Yet, Julian didn’t need to see them to know he remained the most outwardly controlled among them. Monitoring his appearance was a trick Julian had long mastered. One didn’t survive a lengthy period in politics without it. The others, however, had less practice with control and gave away their emotional turmoil.
Beatriz pulled her arm from his to readjust her shawl for the thousandth time since they’d left the monastery to stumble over the uneven ruts on the road. The resettling of her clothing wasn’t the only sign of her confusion—her hands were actually warm. Julian could count on his fingers the number of times that had happened, notably when she labored to birth their sons. Without being able to see their features, Julian guessed that each of his companions continued to suffer from shock. Father Telo clutched the stub of his arm to his chest as he walked, the priest’s eyes would still be darting, never settling. His ambassador to the witches, Teresa, muttered soft bits of words that drifted to Julian’s ears as she argued with herself over something about the Northerners. And Ramiro no doubt continued to wear a look of bemusement, gaze turned inward and half stunned, even as he would start and remember to search the area for threats. Ramiro led their horses—insistent they not ride in the dark and risk breaking vulnerable legs to a rut in the road. Ramiro’s horse followed, the reins looped over its saddle and an ordinary-appearing kitchen tray lashed to the leather along with his son’s armor. All four humans exuded a tightness and a reluctance to speak aloud, as if doing so would bring trouble upon them.
From experience, Julian knew his companions must throw off their devastation in their own way and time, even as he worked to recover from the struggles he himself hid. Struggles that beat upon him no less hard for his composure, making him as jumpy as a lizard with a hawk floating overhead. For one thing, he could remember little since the battle started around Aveston until he’d been reborn and the swarming flies attacked. A time period when, apparently, much had happened and left him clueless. And that was just the start of his uncertainty.
He flexed his left hand, stiff and clumsy from his previous stroke, and it now responded with full mobility as if he’d never been ill—that was certainly enough to stun a person. But on top of that, his memory insisted, their greatest threat was Lord Ordoño. Now, not only did his family tell him Ordoño was dead—murdered by the priestess Santabe—but that the Northern army could no longer be their top concern, compared to a rampaging god. He found it difficult to adjust to such a change of threat.
Equally distracting, he could vaguely recall incredible pain and being unable to move any of his limbs, and getting more and more distant from his own body as he faded into death. It was as if the world had left him behind while he’d been dying and now he had to scramble to keep up.
So while his face remained even and his stride sure, his inner landscape appeared to have been wiped clean, like a slate, to leave him with nothing.
What had been a tumbled emotional landscape of canyons and chasms filled with rocky boulders of doubt since the Northerners arrived had grown smooth and flat but blank and empty—rendering him with nowhere to turn and nothing recognizable—as if he were set down in another world. With the Northern army there were always angles to tackle, possibilities to access. With their new opponent a
n invisible god who struck without warning, he knew not where to start or how to react, left at a loss for answers to share. Adrift in an alien world.
Even his healing, which the others considered a sign of his importance, didn’t give Julian the impression he was given a second chance for a reason. What did he have to contribute compared to the others with a better understanding of what they faced?
Only his tearing grief that followed Salvador’s death had somehow turned to a new perspective on faith and left him with a glimmer of hope, providing the sort of belief that Beatriz had always wished for him. Julian touched heart and spleen. He prayed if miracles could occur then anything was indeed possible. In a single bright spot, Julian no longer doubted that a time would come when he would see his son Salvador again. Beatriz was right. There was a time for everything, even reunions beyond the grave.
Unwilling to concentrate only on his own uncertainty anymore, Julian scanned his surroundings. The road remained empty and the five of them alone. Beatriz had insisted they send the army boys with a few scouts to join the refugees from Aveston. He believed the boys had as much right as any to know about their foe, but Beatriz held tight that the children would be safer in Crueses. And after they’d been singled out by the flies, Julian couldn’t disagree that being around the five of them might be more unsafe than other choices. So the boys joined the refugees from Aveston headed in another direction toward Crueses, while the deserting Northerners presumably went north. Beatriz sent the rest of the scouts from the monastery to Aveston to try and get an accurate count of the Northern army, leaving them alone for the moment.
Moonlight shown through a slit of cloud to highlight a great wall looming in the distance, where bronze gates hung warped and open. Julian jerked upright and stumbled to a halt at the sight. The others around him came to a standstill as well. Even the horses embraced the silence.
Colina Hermosa.
Broken and faded like a once-great lady whom time has passed by, now old and without influence or family.
Gaps in the stone breached the walls around the sides and rear of the city, where the great wall had been undermined to let the citizens escape. Julian hoped that did not mean this Dal could get at them inside. Once again, he had no information on the subject. No one else knew for sure either, so their consensus had led them to take the risk. After all, if blood called the thing, they weren’t likely to attract its attention for the moment.
And they needed shelter and a place to regroup away from the monastery and the reminder of his almost-death. A breathing space to find their wits and pool their information before making crucial decisions. Where better than the empty city?
Home that was a home no longer.
The stench of smoke met them before they reached the gate and slipped inside in continued silence. Though even the hottest embers had grown cold, ash lay thick on every surface, charred beams and fallen buildings obscuring the avenues where the structures weren’t totally consumed. In many spots nothing remained but ash-coated dirt and charcoal. Beatriz pressed her shawl across her nose and coughed.
A home of haunts and ghosts now—certainly no place for the living.
“This way,” Julian directed. He’d read the many reports of the soldiers he’d sent in to explore the city even before it was safe to do so. Those soldiers had created a slender path through the debris running along the wall. A quarter of a mile later, it brought them to intact doors in the wall and a well that had been uncovered. Buckets and ropes still lay around the stone housing of the well.
“Storage rooms three and four,” Ramiro said in wonder.
Julian gave a nod. “They escaped the inferno, though the guardhouses, storerooms, and stables near the gates burned.” He leaned against the wall, his strength still uncertain and his hunger pangs stronger, as wasn’t unusual in a man not long up from his sickbed.
Ramiro opened one of the storeroom doors, revealing a dark space, and Julian said, “They’ll be empty. We salvaged everything from them before the people left for Crueses.”
“One room for people and one for horses,” Ramiro said, taking charge. He rummaged around in the bags on his horse and then handed a bag to Beatriz. “My lantern and firestarter are in there. See if someone can get some light. The rest of you go rest. I can see to the horses and start pulling up some water.”
“As a wandering friar, I’m used to making my own light,” Father Telo said, taking the bag and hunching over it on the ground.
Julian stared into the darkened chamber of stone where they’d take their rest. There were no beds or pillows, just a dirty floor with scattered mouse droppings.
Father Telo held up the flint and tinder in his remaining hand. “I’m afraid I forgot, this is beyond me now.”
“Allow me, Father.” Beatriz bustled over to help, and Julian watched, taken aback. His wife filled many new roles in the last days: politician and now servant. But they needed to focus beyond creature comforts.
“We should make a plan,” Julian said. He didn’t want to discuss what everyone else called a miracle, and he didn’t believe they could rely on that sort of divine intervention again. Better to seek elsewhere. But where to start? Logic said to attack this problem—no matter the immensity of its size—like any other. When in doubt it helped to lay out the facts and plug the holes in his knowledge. The saints had provided him with perhaps the only people with information. The least he could provide in return was the ability to organize. “As I understand it, this Northern god strikes during the day and outdoors, as far as we know. Blood draws its attention, otherwise the appearance is seemingly random. There seem no limits on the number of people it can kill. What else?”
“Its priests use blood from the massacres to change their Diviners to red,” Ramiro offered from where he unsaddled his mare. “I saw them doing so to dozens by Aveston.”
“For a purpose, I assume, that is unknown to us,” Julian added.
“Aye.” Teresa stepped closer. “Father Telo and I saw one of the red Diviners as well, but we’ve no clue of their function. I get the feeling they are much prized. We were warned not to say . . . the Northern god’s name. It apparently was expected to return on a consistent schedule, but has returned five hundred years early—”
“My fault.” Ramiro stopped in his work. “I brought Claire and ordered her to sing about . . . it.”
Beatriz made a noise of protest, but Julian spoke first. “My fault,” he said forcefully. “I sent you to get a witch.”
Father Telo cleared his throat, handless arm clutched against his chest. “And I gave them the knowledge of the Northern god in the first place to put in the magic.”
“If I hadn’t needed rescuing,” Beatriz said, “the magic might never have been used.”
“And so we all had a part,” Teresa said reasonably. “I was the first to talk to the witch girl and attempt to change her from prisoner to ally.”
Julian shook his head. “There is no reason to cast blame. Or rather I should say, there is no blame at all in this case, only unintended consequences. If the witch had been too frightened to sing. If Ramiro had never found her. If I’d never sent the mission to the swamp. If the Northerners never came. If, if, if. One thing is true, we’d all be dead now if we’d made other choices.”
Ramiro looked away. “Instead, others are dead in my place.”
“Our place,” Julian said sternly. “I took our troops to Aveston.” He remembered them as winning, pushing back the Northerners in a glorious charge. Oh, the joy of it . . . Then this Dal came and cut everyone into tiny pieces and he remembered none of it. Instead of hanging his head, Julian swallowed hard. “We cannot go back in time, only forward. It cannot be coincidence that all of us who had a part in bringing this . . . terror into the world are gathered in one place.”
“The Lord has a place and a plan for everything,” Father Telo said from where he held the tinder for Beatriz. She struck flint and steel and the priest caught a spark, blowing softly on the tinde
r until a tiny flame grew. He applied the lint to the lantern wick. “Ah. Do you see? Light comes from base materials. Wonder of wonders, metal and stone gives us heat and comfort. So much more can we expect from the base materials inside ourselves.”
“Aye, Father,” Beatriz said. “It’s too soon to give up now.”
“What else do we know?” Julian asked. He might have a broader perspective on spiritual matters, but he didn’t believe that would save them.
“That Da—our foe intends to snuff out the world.” Ramiro stepped away from his horse to pluck the burning lint from the priest’s hand and stomp it out. “That it won’t stop until we are all dead, and soon enough it will be able to strike at night and indoors. That our instruments of battle are a kitchen tray and our bare hands. We don’t know if steel can stop it, or magic . . . or anything.”
“And you know this how?” Teresa asked. “You’ve witnessed it firsthand? Tried your sword against . . . it? The witch sang against it?”
“I . . . no,” Ramiro faltered. “I . . . saw it in a dream.”
Julian focused his gaze on his son but didn’t interrupt.
“Little incidents of blood—a skinned knee, a baby’s birth—will call its attention. Each one will make it stronger and stronger. It will take out the Northerners, the Women of the Song, us . . . all of the ciudades-estado.”
“Dreamer,” the priest and Teresa said together.
“Describe these dreams. What are they like?” Teresa demanded.
At the same time, Father Telo said, “Touched by our Lord. Shown things seen by no other.”
“Dreamer?” Julian interrupted. “What is this?”
“Only the rarest of saints.” Beatriz’s eyes held fierce pride. “A prophet speaks with God’s voice. A dreamer sees with His eyes.” She dropped the lantern in her hurry to catch Ramiro in an embrace. “My child. It is from the Sight that runs in our family.”
Julian could sense his son’s embarrassment even in the dark, though to his credit Ramiro took the affection like a man and didn’t squirm in his mother’s arms. Julian hastily righted the lantern before the flame was drowned by the oil and turned the subject as Beatriz released their son and reluctantly stepped back. “So we know our foe, but not how to stop it.”
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