Nathaniel clasped his hands at the small of his back and bowed in greeting.
Msitazi did not return it.
Ain’t no good coming of this. He exchanged a glance with Kamiskwa. His brother’s expression revealed nothing but surprise. The two of them, down through the years, had done things to get in trouble, but never had they done anything that earned a greeting like this.
Msitazi turned on his heel and headed back to the village. The other two Altashee remained where they were, closing ranks to bar passage.
The Steward kept his voice low. “Mr. Woods, what’s happening?”
“Iffen I knew, I’d tell you. I reckon tain’t no time for modesty, Steward.” Nathaniel shook his head. “I don’t know what Msitazi has in mind, but I’m going to be trusting it’s for the good.”
The four of them stood on the trail naked for nearly an hour, as measured by the slow lengthening of shadows. It disturbed Nathaniel a bit that the posts didn’t create shadows. It bothered him a lot more that when his shadow crept up to the post line, it did not extend beyond it. By the time Msitazi returned, the line had devoured the shadow of Nathaniel’s head and had started on his shoulders.
The Altashee chieftain tossed four leather hoods outside the line, then accompanied each with a pair of buckskin mittens.
Kamiskwa gathered them, then handed a hood to each of his companions. He opened his to reveal that the turtle symbol had been sewn into the interior. “We put these on and it prevents us from working wickedness.” He pulled his hood on and tied it tightly so that it would not come off without great effort.
Owen looked at Nathaniel. “How much danger are we in?”
The scout looked at Msitazi’s hard expression. “Fact we ain’t dead means there might be some redeeming coming our way. Failing that, though, I reckon we’ll be about as dead as Happy Valley.”
Owen nodded, glanced at his gear, then pulled his hood on. Nathaniel followed suit, tying it snugly around his neck. The hood immediately became hot and stuffy. Nathaniel swallowed to create a little space around the edge, to let fresh air in, but had little success. He shoved his hands into the mittens, felt the beaded pattern inside them as well, and waited.
Rough hands grabbed him, poking and prodding, spinning him one way and back. Fingers jabbed at wounds. A couple reopened. He could feel blood begin that slow, oozing crawl down his forearm and thigh. Then something splashed in the wounds and he yelped. The bag didn’t muffle other shouts, so he knew he wasn’t alone in how he was being treated.
Hands shoved him forward. At the point where he would have expected to pass the post-line, he met resistance. It felt no heavier against him than a spider-web, but it took heavy shoving to get him through it. He stumbled on the other side, but hands caught him. One man on either side marched him along the trail. A couple hundred yards further on they cut off the path. Grasses lashed his thighs, then he found himself on sand and could hear a stream burbling nearby.
His captors forced him down onto hands and knees, then shoved him forward. He crawled along and felt a leather curtain play over his back. Once inside other hands guided him to the left and shoved him down on his side. Another person, straddled him, grabbed his shoulders and hauled him up into a sitting position. The person loosened the hood’s tie and brought the edge up to just beneath his nose, then pressed a narrow-mouthed gourd to his lips.
Nathaniel tipped his head back and drank. Even before the turgid, sour liquid hit his throat, he knew what it was: salksasi. The Shedashee brewed it from mashed roots, adding some maple sugar and peppers. The scent immediately filled his head, clearing it, and the pepper burned his tongue and throat. The Shedashee saved it for rituals of all sorts, usually allowing a warrior only a mouthful because it could produce visions more easily than a gallon of whiskey drunk real fast. Nathaniel couldn’t swallow quickly enough, letting slender ribbons of the liquid roll down the side of his face like saliva.
Finally the gourd disappeared and the hood descended again. Nathaniel lay back and found himself propped up by skins. He tried to shift around, but his hands were numb and his legs had already been arranged so he sat cross-legged. I should have remembered that, shouldn’t I? Then he felt heat building against his chest and legs.
Someone pulled the hood off him, an old man wearing a carved turtle mask. A man in a hawk mask had removed Owen’s hood, and the man wearing a bear mask had removed Kamiskwa’s hood. The other two sat back awkwardly as Nathaniel did, blood trickling from the demon wounds. A small fire burned in the center of the circle, Nathaniel slowly realized, which sat beneath a short dome formed of birch boughs lashed together and covered with hides.
Turtle tossed something onto the fire. The flames shot up, shifting from red-gold to green. A sweet scent, part pine resin, part cedar, filled the enclosure. Smoke drifted down and Nathaniel breathed it in. It erased the last trace of salksasi.
Hawk fed a small wooden disk into the fire. Nathaniel found his eyes drawn to it. The surface had been worked with a sigil that reminded him of the squid motif from the ruin. And yet, even as he stared at it, the octopus’ limbs straightened and the symbol became that of the sun.
And Msitazi’s voice emerged from within the bear mask. “In a time before there was time, when young were the ancient spirits that tread the winding path…”
Msitazi’s voice faded, as did vision of anything but the sun. Nathaniel looked down from the yellow ball in the sky toward a valley, a broad green valley through which snaked a slow, blue river. He stood high on a promontory, yet could not see himself, nor feel himself. He was just there, an observer. He believed himself to be as light as a feather, and willed himself forward and down.
He went down because there, in the valley floor, was a vast city, built within a hexagonal series of mounds, just to the south of the river. To the east and west of it, vast fields had been cultivated, clearly made possible through the network of irrigation canals. Forest abutted the cleared areas, and the wood had been used to build many huts and even larger buildings-buildings that dwarfed the meeting houses, with wings added at odd angles which should have struck him as wrong, but seemed proper. They made the buildings stronger, not in the material world, but in the world of the supernatural. As the canals channeled water, so these walls could divert magick. Courtyards allowed it to pool. Towers sucked it skyward, letting it rain down in displays that teased him. They glittered like icy lace that collapsed when he studied it too intently.
In a large courtyard at the city’s heart-and Nathaniel knew instinctively that this city boasted more people than Temperance-people had gathered for a massive market. The Shedashee were well represented, with tribes he recognized from the east, and those he had dim knowledge of from tales. He even recognized symbols of tribes that no longer existed, which marked the vision as having taken place a long time ago.
In and among the Shedashee, moving between traders, laughing as did people in Temperance as they strolled the streets, were a golden people. Taller than the Shedashee and more slender, with golden hair and golden flesh, they appeared so achingly beautiful that they made Nathaniel weep with desire. Men and women alike wore broad girdles decorated with jewels and golden buttons. Pectorals of gold, worked with lapis and turquoise flashed in the sun. Nathaniel saw not a single weapon among them.
The golden people named themselves Noragah in his mind. They treated with the Shedashee fairly and happily. As the market day ended, the Shedashee retreated to the forests, and the vision vanished in a long night, which passed in an eyeblink. When it returned, the Noragah still strode among the Shedashee, but the Twilight People were not there as friends. They had been enslaved and their bonds appeared fashioned from the same magick that rose in wondrous fountains.
Fountains which now had become fouled and oily, stinking of rotting flesh. Noragah lashed out with magick, killing Shedashee, torturing the land. They forced it to produce food quickly, as had Deacon Stone, but the Noragah never bothered to harvest it. They would let
it rot in the fields, then use magick to raise another crop. As they had enslaved the Shedashee, so they enslaved the very world in which they lived.
Nathaniel tried to pull back from the city, for he could feel the evil pulsing from its heart. Fight as he could, however, the city held him. He did not want to watch, but he recognized the need.
Winged demons followed their masters, doing their bidding and inflicting cruelty on slaves for pure amusement. And though this cruelty entertained the Noragah for a while, it was not long enough. Cities raised armies of the bat-winged demons, and the behemoth which had come after Kamiskwa in the Temple. There must have been rules to their wars, but Nathaniel could not bear to study them long enough to learn. If score was kept, if points were earned, it seemed they went for the most spectacular and torturous methods of destroying an army.
One of the Noragah tired of the game as quickly as Nathaniel. He removed his army from sport and used it to conquer his neighbors. From cities hidden in forests and plains across the continent, rainbows of energy arced through the sky and flooded the valley. The Noragah of that valley grew prosperous. Other Noragah sent their daughters as tribute and accepted sons as governors.
And all around, the land sickened and died. What had been lush and green, turned grey. Swaths of forest burned or blew over. The earth became so exhausted that even more magick could not make it fruitful. So the Noragah began killing the Shedashee and irrigating the fields with their blood. Whole tribes vanished to slake the earth’s thirst and yet even that was not enough.
So the leader of the Noragah wove great magicks which would allow him to tap the blood of the land, running hot and deep. He wanted to raise stone rivers and cover the face of the earth with molten rock, to make it anew.
And he would have succeeded, save for the coming of the dragons.
Chapter Thirty-three
16 June 1767 Strake House Temperance Bay, Mystria
Ian Rathfield leaned heavily on a stout walking stick in the parlor and smiled as Catherine Strake ushered Bishop Bumble into the room. “So good to see you again, your Grace,” Ian said.
“I have been remiss in failing to visit before this.” The round man clapped his hands. “Please, you should not have risen. Sit down.”
Ian eased himself into a chair. Catherine busied herself adjusting cushions and raised his cast foot onto an ottoman. “Thank you, Catherine.”
“My pleasure, Ian.” She straightened up. “I shall bring tea, then leave the two of you to your business.”
“Most kind, Mrs. Strake. And perhaps some of those cakes my wife sent along, on a plate. Do save some for yourself and your daughter.” Bumble smiled. “Where is little Miranda?”
“She is at Prince Haven. It was thought best she stay there so she would not disturb Colonel Rathfield during his convalescence.”
Ian chuckled. “By all reports she has been very helpful with Becca Green. She is mature beyond her years, is Miranda.”
“And a blessing upon this house and the next, I see.” Bumble clasped his hands together in his lap as Catherine swept out of the room. “I apologize for only having sent Mr. Beecher to visit you, but there has been a great deal of work to be done in anticipation.”
Ian’s eyes narrowed. “I must have missed something. Anticipation of…?”
“Of putting Ezekiel Fire on trial for heresy.”
“Really.” Ian’s flesh tightened. “I must say, Bishop, that I do not remember anything out of the ordinary. No bloody sacrifices, no obscene rituals.”
“One could hardly expect they would reveal the same to outsiders.” The older man cocked his head to the side. “Still, the Happy Valley community practiced plural marriage, worshipped golden tablets, and was made up of people willing to sacrifice themselves and their children, and did so beyond the borders of Crown-sanctioned holdings. This also placed him outside the jurisdiction of the Church. He had no bishop above him and belonged to no established diocese.”
Ian winced as he lifted and resettled his leg. “I don’t wish to argue with you, but I believe there are a number of colonial villages in the west in which plural marriage is practiced. I sincerely doubt all of them are formally part of a diocese.”
Bumble raised his hands. “There may have to be allowances for what some people do in innocence. Whereas, Ezekiel Fire chose a murderer and notorious drunkard as his lieutenant.”
“We were told that Rufus Branch had not touched a drop of alcohol in years.”
“Believe me, Colonel, I do not fault you nor anyone else for being deceived by Fire.” The man turned. “Mrs. Strake, you really shouldn’t have.”
Catherine returned with a silver service in hand and set the tray down on a small table. She poured through a strainer for each man, adding two spoonfuls of sugar for the cleric. She handed Ian his tea, strong and black.
Bumble looked up. “You don’t take sugar or milk, Colonel?”
Catherine answered for him. “Colonel Rathfield developed a taste for his tea without adulterations in the field. One cannot always be certain to get milk and sugar on the march.”
Bumble stirred quietly. “Yes, ghastly thing, being on the march. I joined them, you know, going to Anvil Lake. Mud to my waist, biting bugs, profanity, all quite horrible.”
Catherine plated a small cake and offered it to Ian. “To say nothing of the actual fighting, your Grace?”
“Yes, of course. As your husband might know, Mrs. Strake, or the Colonel here.”
Ian watched Catherine stiffen and leaned forward. “Catherine, if you would not mind. That cushion. I promise, it will be the last I bother you.”
“No bother at all, Ian.” She straightened a cushion by pulling it to the side then sliding it back exactly where it had been. “If you need anything more, please, just call out.”
The Bishop, catching cake crumbs on a plate placed beneath his chins, nodded.
Ian waited for her to disappear before he set his tea down on a side table. “To be honest, Bishop Bumble, I am not at all certain we were deceived by Steward Fire. Branch may well have deceived him, but the man who traveled with us to Piety and back seemed quite sincere. Were he one to mock or tempt, he had more than enough opportunity to do so.”
“Really?”
Ian deliberately took a large bite from the cake he’d been offered. He found it dry and largely tasteless-consisting more of sawdust and salt than anything sweet. He would have washed it down immediately with tea, but that would have freed him to speak. He wanted the time that chewing and swallowing afforded him to cover his reaction.
The Bishop clearly was inviting him to talk about any theological discussions on the trail. Save for Makepeace Bone, all of them had made remarks that could have been interpreted as critical of the Church, whether they were meant to be or not. While Ian knew that his companions had tolerated him more than respected him, he didn’t want to reveal anything to the cleric which could come back to haunt them.
Ian sipped tea. “Yes, well, of course, as you saw in your time in the wilderness, men can be coarse and crude, even given to profanity. I will admit to uttering a curse or three myself. Had he wished to manipulate our view of him, he could have done so.”
“I see.” Bumble nodded solemnly. “Now when Mr. Beecher came to visit, he said you could remember nothing of the other matter we had talked about. Has your head cleared since then?”
Ian set his cup and saucer down. “I am not certain, Bishop, that Mr. Beecher serves you in the best way.”
“What do you mean?”
“He made a veiled reference to a matter which I had addressed with you, in the confidence of the confessional, if you will recall.” Ian allowed a scowl to steal over his features. “I fear the man may have listened in to our conversation. Not thinking him a safe conduit for information, I complained of a headache which clouded my recollection.”
“I see.”
“I apologize for causing you undue upset about your aide.”
The rotund man sh
ook his head, his chins quivering. “Calm yourself on that count, sir. You must understand, sir, that Mr. Beecher did not listen into our conversation. I told him everything you told me.”
Ian blinked and sagged back. “You what?”
“Colonel, it is my duty to see to the spiritual life of everyone within my diocese. What you revealed to me is most troubling, and I would have been remiss if I did not inform Mr. Beecher. In the event I am unable to perform my duties, my responsibilities will fall to him.”
Ian glanced off toward the room’s far corner, avoiding the man’s gaze. “But what I told you in the confessional, you used to pressure me into undertaking special work for you in the wilderness.”
Bumble, eyes wide, set the cake plate down forthwith. “In the name of Heaven, sir, I apologize if that is how it appeared to you. I merely wished you to understand that as you trusted me with your most closely held secret, so I trusted you with a mission of incredibly great importance. If… if you felt I coerced you in any way, if Mr. Beecher gave you the impression that your secret would become public… well, sir, I understand your outrage and I offer you a most sincere apology.”
Ian shifted in the chair. “You will forgive me, sir, for making such a mistake.”
“Of course, of course.” Bumble’s smile spread across his face. “I do have to ask, however, if you saw anything concerning what we discussed.”
“I do not recall anything which indicated Steward Fire was practicing or causing his people to practice magicks.”
“Did you not tell Mr. Beecher that Fire prevented Woods and Strake from shooting Rufus Branch?”
Ian frowned, his head beginning to throb. “I told your aide that Woods and Strake both reported being unable to fire their rifles, but I have no proof that there truly was such a prohibition. To be frank, they had been having me on about all manner of things during the journey. I thought this might well be yet another of their amusements.”
Of Limited Loyalty cc-2 Page 26