Paracelsus turned back to his horse, ready to mount up, but then his immense head swiveled to look to his right. He pointed to the nasturtium bed a few yards away.
“My translation is lying there upon the ground like a thrown horseshoe,” he growled.
Imelda and Basilio both glanced at it. Then Imelda looked at Basilio. Basilio looked at Imelda.
Their swords came up again.
“Apparently I shall retrieve it,” Paracelsus said. He walked over and picked up the translated Book of the Seven Hands as if it were a volunteer flower in the garden. As he walked back to them, the alchemist turned the new, crisp pages of the book carefully, as if to inspect for possible damage. He ran his hand along the brown binding and then offered the book to Basilio, ignoring Imelda and her sword.
“It’s yours, I imagine.”
Basilio did not accept it. He looked at Imelda. “Are you going to kill me if I take it?”
“I’ve been trying to decide that,” she said. After a tense moment, she sheathed her espada. “There’s no use. I must return to court and inform the king that I’ve failed. Rey Carlos wanted the Book of the Seven Hands, not a copy.”
That wasn’t the whole truth, Basilio knew. In the church she had grabbed both books. She did want the translation—for herself, Basilio guessed, and Zacarías had set it aside too, just a moment ago. For all the talk of destroying la destreza, there had been great interest in saving its training manual. Imelda eyed the book now, but not with covetousness, Basilio thought. More like possibility.
“I have to go! Take it, damn you. This is the better book to have, anyway,” Paracelsus pleaded.
Perhaps this is exactly how each successive book within the book within the book was created, Basilio thought. The Spanish-Arab initiates of the OMVI had fought to make a translation of the Latin book, and the Latin-speaking initiates of the OMVI had fought to make a translation of the Greek. Who knows whom the Greek initiates were struggling to remember? Maybe Adam wrote the first one, struggling to pass on sword instruction from St. Michael himself. Clearly, the most important thing to Don Manuel was being able to read the words of his predecessors, not simply to collect and own the untranslated, inscrutable book. Basilio took the copy and opened it to see Paracelsus’s magnificent handwriting and the figures of assaulting, parrying, and readied fighters, which he had resketched in ink throughout.
The figures all looked like Alejo.
Paracelsus gave Basilio a curt, friendly nod and a kind, ugly smile, then turned away, but Basilio stopped him.
“You Northerners take your parting like farmhands leaving a barn,” Basilio chided him. “Come. Embrace me before you go, Paracelsus. Say good-bye like a Spaniard, goddamn you.”
“For the love of…” Paracelsus muttered. But he faced Basilio and allowed the swordsman to hold him and kiss both cheeks. Before the alchemist could pull away, Basilio murmured in his ear, “Thank you for the throwing dagger.”
Paracelsus chuckled. “It helped?”
“In ways I cannot count,” he said. “And thank you for taking care of Alejo.”
Paracelsus raised his soft, girlish hands and held Basilio gently. The alchemist sucked in his breath, and to Basilio it sounded like prelude to a sob. “I was with him for ten days straight. I taught him the twelve-point Kabala sword steps from the Book of the Seven Hands. I will miss him so dearly.”
They broke their embrace. As Paracelsus mounted his horse, Basilio said, “Am I a Philosopher’s Stone?”
Paracelsus smiled down at him from his saddle. “Mainly, I was buying you time to clear your head. You weren’t looking so good. But you could be, I suppose. I’ll do more research and let you know. Now ride, Basilio, and may the divine truth follow you. And with you, there, you swordswoman, whoever you are. Dear me, the doctor who set your nose was a vile miscreant. I’ll misdirect the excellent Lord Casal’s soldiers! I’m off!” And Paracelsus rode back the way he’d come.
Basilio felt ready to crumple. His belly wound. His shattered left arm. His kicked-in face and, yes, lost tooth. “Oh, God. I can’t fight my way out of this town.”
“You won’t need to, because I’m with you,” Imelda said. She herself looked a ghoulish fright with that spray of blood down the front of her shirt. “My papers of royal passage will carry me through any gate in Spain. So I’ll see you through the east gate. And, who knows, maybe further.”
Basilio looked at her, surprised. “You will? Why?”
Imelda said, “I want to see what’s in that book. Or maybe I just want to see what happens now that la destreza is out of that pig Don Manuel’s hands and in yours, instead.”
Basilio wanted to defend his master and first true love, but she was right about that much: la destreza was in his hands. Literally. “I vowed never to teach it.”
“An empty promise made to a false priest?” Imelda said. “It’s your duty to break that one.”
“Good point.” He led Imelda to the sullen draft horse and gestured for her to mount up. Padrona remained, allowing the king’s assassin to swing herself up onto her back.
Basilio smiled wanly at Padrona. “Oh, of course. Her, you like.”
Then, in a show of faith that Basilio told about for the rest of his days, Padrona kneeled upon her forelegs as if sensing it would be difficult for Basilio to mount up.
He let Imelda pull him atop of Padrona, and they were off with the sounds of Lord Casal’s soldiers chasing someone on horseback to the east gate.
“Gracias, mamacita. Gracias,” he said to Padrona. “Let’s see if we can exit through the west gate, Imelda.”
Imelda sighed, and a long pause passed between them as Padrona walked them along. “And after the gate is behind us? Do you have an idea where we’re going?”
“We’ll eat a small lunch outside town and catch a second wind,” Basilio said.
There was a devilish ring to his voice that Imelda seemed to enjoy.
“Luchar luchas más?” she said.
“Let’s go kill those bastard Italians for shooting at us.”
Imelda rubbed her wounded leg and said enthusiastically, “Amen.”
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Barth Anderson is the author of two novels, The Patron Saint of Plagues and The Magician and The Fool. The latter was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 2009. Anderson’s short stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Talebones, and he won the Spectrum Award for Best Short Fiction in 2004 for his short story “Lark Till Dawn, Princess.”
Anderson is chief blogger at Fair Food Fight, specializing in shaking up the food and ag worlds. He lives in Minneapolis.
The Foreworld Saga continues in these other great titles from 47North!
Novels
The Mongoliad: Book 1
The Mongoliad: Book 2
The Mongoliad: Book 3
Foreworld SideQuests
Sinner
Dreamer
Seer
The Lion in Chains
The Shield-Maiden
The Beast of Calatrava
And find out more about the Foreworld Saga and forthcoming titles here.
The Book of Seven Hands: A Foreworld SideQuest (The Foreworld Saga) Page 13