Unfettered

by Terry Brooks

  “I’m coming.” In a series of swift, economical movements, Chrétien twined his hair into a braid and wound it into a coil. Jamming the hat down on his head, he rose to follow Rikard.

  The streets of St. Sithonia were narrow. Most had been carved out of the rock where paths occurred by nature and tended to unexpected twists and jags. There was a crude, raw strength in this land, Chrétien thought; the bones of the earth, thrust naked into the unforgiving air. The faces of the Vralians were like that too, rugged bones jutting close to the skin.

  “Of course, Sithonia did more for the Vralings than she knew,” Rikard observed as they negotiated the winding streets crowded with pilgrims and tradesfolk.

  “Meaning…?”

  “Meaning her miracle has grown very profitable over the centuries. You know that Janos Vralkaan wants to institute trade with foreign nations?”

  “Yes, of course.” The words came naturally. He was the heir to just such a foreign nation; of course he knew, it was his duty to know such things.

  “He needs money to develop industry. The Vralian Orthodox Church tithes seventy percent to the Prince-Protectorate.”

  A half-step behind Rikard, Chrétien closed his eyes and winced, forcing his tone to lightness. “And St. Sithonia contributes her share, eh?”

  “They say that as her strength failed her on the shore of Lake Khirzak, and the flame of her life waned and guttered, she danced. In praise of God, in thanks for His allowing her to protect the Wheel of Vral from the Profaners, she danced.” Beneath the overhanging eave of a butcher’s shop, Rikard glanced at him, his expression unreadable. “Vralia and God cannot be separated. The War of the Profaners proved it,” he said flatly.

  “You believe?”

  “On the stony shore of Lake Khirzak, in sight of her pursuers and assorted fishermen, Sithonia cast down the plate she had carried so far and danced upon the shards, upon the shore, until her feet bled. And as her dance faltered, her spirit ascended; and as her body crumpled to the ground, the naked rocks burst forth with a profusion of roses,” Rikard said. “How can one not believe?”

  Chrétien grinned. “Need we review Anastimus’ Logic of Doubt?” he asked. Rikard laughed, and they continued walking.

  “No,” he said. “It’s not that. There is belief and belief; I’m not sure what I believe. But there is also faith, which is a different thing. And what I said about Vralia and God, that’s true.”

  The foot traffic increased as the city fell behind them and the steep terrain gentled into slopes. How strange, Chrétien thought, for a country to be rooted in such a fierce, violent faith—to be wholly governed by it. Even in Terre d’Ange, where nobles of the great houses trace direct descent from Elua and his Companions, we know better. Blessed Elua cared naught for thrones, nor for mortal politics. No civilized nation could survive such single-mindedness, and yet Janos Vralkaan the Prince-Protectorate seeks to use religion as his whipping horse, driving Vralia into trade status astride its back. What shall Vralia become if he succeeds?

  And worse, if he fails? What then?

  Uneasy at the thought, Chrétien abandoned it as the vista of Lake Khirzak opened before them. The lake was flat and vast, too wide to see across. It was flanked along one side by the forest that rolled down from the mountains like a dark green carpet. The air above the water shimmered with heat-bands and the water itself was a blue so intense it made one’s eyes ache.

  On the shore was a crowd of Vralians milling about like peasants at a fair, pressing close around an empty stretch of the shoreline. There was nothing else to be seen.

  “The shrine of St. Sithonia,” Rikard announced, his voice devoid of inflection.

  People streamed past them in either direction, but Rikard had stopped and showed no inclination to continue. A few people touched their brows, recognizing the Governor’s son. He gave them no sign of recognition. Chrétien waited.

  A lone figure stepped onto the empty shoreline and began a series of strange, capering gyrations silhouetted against the intense blue of Lake Khirzak.

  “What is it?” Chrétien asked at length.

  “He’s trying to trace the Steps of Sithonia. Her footprints are embedded in the rock, you see.” Now Rikard merely sounded tired. He removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow. “No one’s ever succeeded. Still, they pay for the chance to try.” He replaced his hat. “Come on.”

  Even in the simple act of walking, Rikard noticed, Chrétien elicited glances from the Vralian passersby. He moved—could not fail to move—with the unearthly grace of a D’Angeline prince, bred in the bone since Elua wandered the earth, and trained into the sinew from birth. The wide-brimmed hat, the plain shirt of white linen, the grey woolen trousers, rag-wrapped hilt of his sword, and worn boots could not disguise it.

  “You should try the Steps,” Rikard said.

  Chrétien shook his head. “Not I.”

  A scant fifty yards from the shrine, half a dozen vendors had set up booths where they shamelessly hawked their wares. They paused before a table covered with crudely cast bronze ikons of St. Sithonia, ranging from the demure to the downright erotic. Chrétien picked up one of the latter and examined it.

  “According to some legends, Sithonia was a novice at the Abbey St. Ekaterin. According to others,” Rikard said dryly, “she was a repentant prostitute. You should buy one. A souvenir.”

  Chrétien shook his head again and placed the ikon of Sithonia back on the table, earning a glance of sharp annoyance from the vendor. Even as he set it down, a woman of middle years with a red kerchief tied about her head elbowed her way past him and seized the figurine.

  “For aid in matters of love, madam.” Clad in the black robes of a priest, the vendor addressed her in unctuous tones. “For aid in matters of love, pray to St. Sithonia at sunrise and sunset for seven days.” He picked up a small stoppered vial, pulled out the stopper and wafted the bottle beneath the woman’s nose. “For best results, rub three drops of this upon the feet of Sithonia each time you pray. Attar of roses, all the way from Terre d’Ange.”

  “No,” said Chrétien. Rikard, who had taken his arm, froze.

  “Does the young lord profess expertise in matters of love or in matters of prayer?” the priest-vendor inquired, his voice taking on acidic edge. Chrétien plucked the bottle from his hand and sniffed the contents.

  “Neither,” he said, handing the bottle back. “But this oil was never distilled in Terre d’Ange.”

  “And how…?” the priest-vendor began, still acid; and then Chrétien tilted his head slightly so that sunlight pierced the shadow beneath the brim of his hat, illuminating his features. The vendor’s mouth ceased speaking and gaped.

  “Chrétien!” Rikard hissed, dragging his friend away, indiscriminate of the jostling crowd.

  As soon as they were in the clear, Chrétien shook him off and said abruptly, “I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “You know how it is with luxury items. The name alone adds half a florin to the price, true or no. It was the same in Tiberium, Angelicus.”

  “One never gets used to hearing the name of one’s country taken in vain, that’s all.”

  For a moment, Rikard said nothing.

  Once, when they were all staggering-drunk, Chrétien had fallen into an argument with a Caerdicci rug merchant who insisted his wares were genuine D’Angeline. Chrétien had drawn his sword and slashed every rug in the shop into pieces no larger than a man’s palm. No one had dared lay a hand on him. It was forgiven, of course, because he was the Dauphin of Terre d’Ange and because his father’s bursar made good on the damages.

  Rikard had never understood why he’d done it.

  “I know what you mean,” he said now, “but never mind. Let’s see the shrine.” He plunged into the thickest of the throng then, forging a path through the vendors’ stalls until they had a clear view of the holy site.

  The empty stretch of shore was cordoned off with twisted ropes of sun-faded velvet. Aside from the crowds, there
was not much to see but the still blue water blazing under the white sun and the hummock of grey stone that lined the shore. A series of slight indentations, vaguely foot-sized and stained with a sanguine pigment, were impressed upon the barren rock.

  “The Steps of Sithonia,” Rikard murmured in Chrétien’s ear. “Or mineral deposits. Take your pick.”

  His voice seemed to come from a great distance, for the Dauphin of Terre d’Ange was envisioning gone the ropes, the crowds, the ubiquitous priest-vendors; gone, all gone, until there was only the harsh, splendid sprawl of the Vralian landscape, the wide, blue-burning eye of the lake and the martyred stone, forever branded with Sithonia’s bloody footprints. Trying to imagine how she must have felt, Chrétien shuddered and lifted his face to the bright, cruel sky. His heart expanded and his eyes welled with sudden tears.

  And then one of the Sithonian pilgrims broke his reverie, pushing out of the crowd to thrust a handful of coins into the purse of the priest-vendor who kept the shrine.

  The shrinekeeper drew back a rope and admitted the aspirant onto the sacred stone. The man hitched up his trousers, murmuring under his breath; prayer or instruction, it was impossible to tell. He placed his feet carefully on the first two Steps.

  “What happens if he succeeds?” Chrétien whispered.

  “He won’t.”

  One, two, three Steps; a turn, then several quick steps, then a spinning lunge and the man lost his balance, overcompensated, and set a foot down on bare stone. His shoulders slumped. The crowd sighed.

  “Do you think it could be done?” Rikard asked Chrétien, who shrugged.

  “By a D’Angeline master of dance? Yes and no. Oh, we could probably devise something that would trace the Steps, but the odds of duplicating Sithonia’s dance are one in ten thousand.”

  “Truly?” Rikard sounded surprised. Chrétien glanced at him.

  “You can’t choreograph exaltation,” he said, and Rikard stared at the crimson-patterned stone, frowning.

  When it came, the wordless shout seemed to shatter the hard, bright air. Rikard was half-aware, as he turned, that he had been hearing for some time a muttering disturbance behind them; he was half-aware too, as a second shout, awful and despairing, ripped across the sky, that Chrétien had already whipped about, begun to draw his sword and paused, shoving it back into its scabbard.

  The terrible sound came from a young man, scarce past adolescence, who stood with his legs astraddle on a tall, jutting boulder at the eastern edge of the shrine. Even as Rikard watched, he threw back his head and shouted again, the cords in his throat swelling visibly with the raw force of it.

  “Ikon-breaker,” someone behind Rikard muttered fearfully.

  Several of the Prince-Protectorate’s troops emerged at a run from the distant edge of the forest, their black and silver uniforms in stark monochromatic contrast to the stony terrain.

  “Vral protect us!” said another voice. “It’s Miodrag the Cobbler’s son. He’s lost his wits!”

  Rikard spun about, saw the woman who had spoken and caught her wrist. “What’s his crime? The cobbler’s son, what’s his crime?”

  She blinked in fear, wrenched her wrist from his grasp and backed away from him, but someone else, a tall man with the black-pored face of a coal miner, answered. “Killed two Vralkaani soldiers. They’d come to take his father to debtor’s prison.”

  “Vralkaani? Why?”

  The miner’s eyes were bleak. “Cobbler was in debt to the Church. Wife was dying. He purchased healing prayers on credit. Wife died anyway. He couldn’t honor the debt.”

  “Here? In St. Sithonia?”

  “Aye.”

  Rikard cursed.

  “The cobbler died too,” a second man added. “Blow to the head. The Vralkaani beat him when his boy escaped.”

  On the boulder, the cobbler’s son cried aloud, “Sithonia!” His hands knotted spasmodically into fists, his eyes were wild and full of sunfire. Except for a ragged breechclout, he was naked, begrimed and thorn-scratched.

  Left to himself while Rikard questioned onlookers, Chrétien thought, ah, Elua; this one, he is not calling on the saint only, he is calling on the city, he is calling on them all. Shivers raced over his skin.

  “Hear me, Sithonia, for I will soon be dead! You, who were once a savior of Vralia, have become its whore!” With another wordless cry, the cobbler’s son leapt from the boulder. The crowds parted before him. “You!” His finger pointed, his arm swung, encompassing the crowd. “All of you. Blasphemers!”

  In a few swift strides, he crossed to the nearest booth, set a shoulder to it, and heaved. Shelves laden with fine enamel work crashed to the ground, graven images shattering.

  “Here is your truth,” the cobbler’s son said bitterly. “Broken faith.” He grasped shards of the broken ikons with both hands. “Sithonia did not die that you might bear children,” he said, almost gently, extending one hand to a young woman who shrank back from him. His fist clenched about the shards, and blood dripped to the ground. “Nor that you might be made young,” he said to an elderly man leaning on a crutch, and clenched the other fist. His blood ran in scarlet ribbons. A sound like a moan rippled through the crowd.

  “No! Sithonia died to keep the Wheel of Vral from the Profaners!” the youth cried, and dashed the shards to the ground.

  The Vralkaani soldiers had covered half the distance between the forest and the shrine. People began to back away from the cobbler’s son, away from the shrine, away from the booths. With a howl of rage, the soldiers’ quarry swept his arm across another booth, sending rows of statuettes to their demise.

  And then he turned and grasped the velvet cords that sectioned off the Steps of Sithonia. The muscles of his back and arms strained visibly as he hauled the ropes and the posts that anchored them loose from their moorings, and hurled them into the still blue depths of Lake Khirzak.

  With a splash, the tangle of ropes and posts sank into the water and disappeared. The cobbler’s son faced the crowd, holding out his bleeding hands, his eyes now strangely tranquil. His naked chest, smeared with grime and shining with sweat, heaved from his exertions.

  Name of Elua, but he’s young, Chrétien thought in anguish. How can they just stand, how can they bear to watch? I will never, until my death, understand this country.

  “Once Vralia served the glory of God,” the cobbler’s son said quietly. “Now God serves the glory of Janos Vralkaan, and we are all Profaners.”

  In the silence that followed, the troops of the Prince-Protectorate arrived. No one spoke.

  “Get back!” the soldiers’ captain shouted at the crowd, his badge flashing on the front of his cap, silver braid winking on its brim. “Back!” He unslung his musket, and his men followed suit. Four of them took warning aim at the crowd. The other five trained their muskets on the cobbler’s son, alone and half-naked on the shore.

  Rikard stood rigid in the crowd. Chrétien’s hand locked onto his upper arm, nails digging into his flesh. “Do something!” he hissed. “You’re the Governor’s son!”

  “I can’t,” Rikard murmured. He looked at Chrétien with eyes full of despair. “He killed Vralkaani soldiers, don’t you see? It doesn’t matter why. There’s nothing I can do; it would be treason.”

  The captain raised his hand. His troops waited motionless.

  “Fire,” the captain said.

  They did.

  One ball caught the cobbler’s son in the right shoulder, spinning him around and making the other shots go wild. He staggered, raising a hand to his bleeding shoulder.

  “Oh God,” Rikard whispered. The cobbler’s son had just traced the first three Steps of Sithonia.

  “Reload,” said the captain. “Fire.”

  Two more shots struck the youth, driving him, spinning, half-falling, each faltering step tracing one of St. Sithonia’s crimson footprints. “No,” Rikard heard himself saying, “No, no, no.” His arm was numb from the pressure of Chrétien’s grip.

  “Reload
,” said the captain again. “Fire.”

  The cobbler’s son lifted his eyes to the sun.

  When the final volley struck him, his body jerked like a puppet’s, wildly, flailing; it was impossible that he kept his feet, bleeding from more than half a dozen fatal wounds; impossible that every staggering step he took was tracing, continued to trace, each and every one of the Steps of Sithonia. And yet he did.

  In silence, the captain lowered his hand.

  In silence, the cobbler’s son crumpled and fell to the stones.

  In silence, the barren, bloodstained rocks brought forth a profusion of roses, wild and crimson.

  They lingered only for a moment, blossoming in glorious billows of scarlet and vermilion, twined with glimpses of thorns and green vines; then they withered, faded, and passed from existence, leaving behind only the body of the cobbler’s son, pale and motionless on the shore.

  “Take him,” said the captain, his jaw clenched on his disbelief. Faces blank with shock, the soldiers moved to obey. And for the second time that day, a tremendous shout split the sky; not raw and anguished, this, but a gilded trumpet-peal of denial.

  “NO!”

  With an awful feeling of recognition, Rikard realized that there was only one throat in Vralia that could have uttered that sound. Before he could comprehend the flash of movement to his left and the absence of the death grip upon his arm, he saw.

  Between the cobbler’s son and the soldiers stood Chrétien L’Envers, the Dauphin of Terre d’Ange. His sword gleamed beneath the merciless sun. His hat had blown off. His hair had come loose from its casual braid and it shone like a noonday star. His face, naked in its beauty, seemed to blaze with a terrible light in the harsh Vralian landscape.

  “Do you dare?” he asked the captain, smiling a deadly smile. Sunlight ran like water down the length of his sword. “Do you dare?”