Between Two Fires (9781101611616)

by Buehlman, Christopher

  It circled twice, then stopped. How unlike a bird it was, though it had wings, or at least explained itself with them; no bird could just hang in the sky like a still image of itself. It peered down into the fields, its face almost feline, but wrong, its teeth black in a sickly glowing mouth. It roared, and its roar was familiar, that lion’s roar in grotesque.

  An angel of wrath

  A lion tearing an old man in an arena

  It saw something that interested it; a great black limb, now an arm, now a sort of paw, reached down impossibly far and picked something up.

  A girl.

  Christ, no, no, not her.

  But it was not her.

  This girl was older and wore a dark dress, though her hair was the same length and color. She hung limply, doll-sized. The lion-devil’s two hot eyes regarded her, and then it huffed in disappointment, bit the legs from her, and flung her so she spun end over end into the greenish night.

  It was closer now, and a great stink came down from the sky, at once sour and burned. Still it looked down in the fields, pulling the roofs from houses, knocking carts over to look beneath them.

  A flung cart hit the road near Thomas, its wheel flying off and striking the knight above the eye, knocking him to all fours.

  It was coming closer.

  It searched the road, the field.

  Thomas crawled into a gully and pulled branches over himself.

  But it was not looking for him.

  It wanted Delphine.

  Pére Matthieu hugged his tree and shuddered, too afraid to move again, and too angry that God had abandoned them to these horrors. “Where are you, where are you,” he said at intervals, but it was not until the wind calmed down that he heard a voice above.

  “Here,” it said.

  It was small and scared.

  Delphine.

  She was up a tree.

  Of course.

  She had run to the same strong old oak tree that had attracted him.

  With her to protect, some small strength came back to him. He let go of the trunk and reached up to her.

  “Come down,” he said.

  “No. You come up.”

  “I’m old. I can’t climb a tree.”

  “If you don’t, I think he will find you.”

  “Who?”

  “The fallen angel. The bad one. It’s coming.”

  Père Matthieu Hanicotte climbed the tree.

  The wind picked up again.

  The priest prayed silently, forming his mouth around the unvoiced Latin but giving no thought to the words; his mind was on the sky above them and he listened, as she did, to the awful noise battering them from above. Growing closer. The stink pouring down on them was as bad as the noise, and he fought hard not to retch, for fear that if he started he wouldn’t stop until he had fallen from the limb he clung to. The noise grew louder and closer yet, banging like fists inside his skull. He squared his mouth to scream, but Delphine’s small hand stoppered it. He looked up at her where she perched on the small branch above his. She pulsed her hand and shook her head no. Tears wet her cheeks, and her mouth, too, was a rictus, but she did not cry out.

  Don’t, her eyes said.

  Please.

  He choked back the sound in his throat and clung tighter to the rough branch that swayed wildly in his arms and between his knees. The wind raged, needling his face and hands with small debris. He was becoming dizzy. Squinting, he glanced up to make sure the girl was still holding on, too.

  She was.

  But it was over them now.

  Its round mouth of fire hot behind backlit leaves.

  The idiot scream in his head formed into words.

  WHERE ARE YOU LITTLE WHORE WE’LL FIND YOU IF WE HAVE TO PRY UP EVERY ROOF FROM HERE TO THE SEA AND YANK UP EVERY TREE THAT’S IT ISN’T IT YOU’RE IN A TREE WE SMELL YOUR FEAR CLOSE YOUR THOUGHTS OF HOW YOUR DEATH WILL BE BUT IT WILL BE WORSE AND DEATH ISN’T THE END OF IT YES! HERE! We see you.

  Now a white hand

  A fucking hand!

  the size of a pony snaked down from the sky on the end of an arm with far too many joints. It pulled branches from their tree. Now the priest did scream. As did Delphine. More hands. Five? Six?

  They grabbed the tree now and heaved and shuddered it up from the earth. It turned upside down, turning around Père Matthieu as he fell, buffeting him with branches and what leaves remained, but slowing his fall so when the earth rose and whacked his side and head and banged his knees together, he lost the wind from his lungs but broke nothing.

  He watched the tree recede above him, her face white in the foliage, her legs padlocked on her branch.

  NO! he tried to scream, but his flat lungs allowed only a croak.

  The thing above him held the tree like a toy.

  It was an abomination.

  Six wings.

  Six arms.

  Pulling the tree apart now.

  Why must you hurt her she’s so small

  Twelve eyes glowing and a round mouth of fire.

  Père Matthieu clasped his hands together in prayer, unable to form words but imagining an angel of God coming down.

  Then he saw it.

  It came.

  A small moon, newly risen, amber behind the clouds, moving fast.

  One of the thing’s twelve eyes cocked that way, but the rest stayed fixed on its task. It shook the tree.

  Something fell.

  One of those white hands just missed it.

  The girl.

  The priest stumbled to his feet, tried to get beneath her, but he was too far away. Too old. Too slow.

  Still he ran.

  He had some air in him now, and he cried out.

  “God, please!”

  The light from the cloud dove as a falcon would, one of the smallest and fastest of them for which kings pay the price of towns, and it caught her.

  And was itself caught.

  A hand jerked its beautiful ankle.

  More tore at its wings.

  The forgotten tree tumbled, slowly, as if in a dream.

  The angel, yanked backward, lost its grip on the girl, and she fell again; something from the other (a tail?) grabbed for her and missed.

  A sword of pure moonlight flashed in the angel’s hand.

  The two fought viciously as another dark shape closed in.

  The girl fell.

  Closer to the ground now.

  Close to the priest.

  He ran under her.

  Her form grew bigger swiftly, coming at him.

  Please, God.

  He caught her, mostly.

  His nose bloodied, his eye shut, his mouth full of grit.

  They rolled.

  She smelled of juniper.

  Somehow he picked her up and ran.

  Thomas lay in his gully, covered in sticks, struggling to stay conscious—the wheel from the dropped cart had hurt him.

  He had to watch for the girl, but he could not tear his eyes from the fight.

  An angel and two devils.

  The end of the world.

  The battle pitched through the sky, careening over Auxerre, then back over the fields. Now a light, golden-orange and lovely, just the sort the sun casts through clouds before it sinks, broke and lit up the river and the eastern part of town. Then everything went black, and the light shone only in flashes, painting scenes that formed in instants and dissolved into darkness again. Now a mass of black tentacles roped around the source of the light; now a beautiful arm glowing with pale light flashed down with a sword, cutting some of these, and causing the firmament to shudder like a ripple going through a pan of water. Thomas knew somehow that what he was seeing was not precisely true, but a translation; he had no way to understand what he was seeing, so his mind painted its own pictures. Now one black, winged thing tore at the beautiful winged thing with a mouth like a lion’s mouth, over which its two eyes blazed with insanity and rage. Now the six-winged darkness wheeled down, and fire from its round mou
th spouted against the beautiful one, in a huge gout that impacted against its target and was deflected, flowering and raining down all over the fields, lighting up the countryside here and there in a multitude of small fires. Everything went black again until the three figures locked together, the black ones driving the illuminated one down and down, into a field of barley not far from the river. A screaming sound that was at once animalistic and mechanical shocked Thomas’s ears and raised all the small hairs on his body.

  The shock of their fall dug a deep trench, knocked trees down in a circle, their tops pointed away.

  In the barley field, great beings, beings the size of windmills, thrashed and rolled and gouged the earth. Two of them were as black as though holes had been cut in the fabric of the world; one shone like the full moon, just that heartbreaking in its beauty, casting mad shadows through the grain and the trees and along the hills as it moved. Now its light grew fainter as the six-winged one pinned it down and smothered it. Thomas stood up to see the two-winged one rise up, filling the air with a lion’s roar that was at once tortured and triumphant; its great arms whipped down and thrust a spear at the source of the light, which sputtered and quit. The ground shuddered so hard that Thomas was knocked from his feet.

  At just that moment, every bird in the forest and fields cried out in a great cacophony, even those that sing only by day, so loud and crazed that it even drowned out the roaring wind.

  Thomas realized that he was shouting, but, even realizing it, he couldn’t stop. A warm rain began to fall, but what fell was thicker than water, smearing on the knight’s face, even into his mouth, affronting it with the coppery, salty taste of blood.

  He covered his eyes with his hands and curled his knees up to his chin, still shouting hoarsely, at the edge of his sanity.

  He passed from consciousness and, mercifully, dreamed nothing.

  PART III

  For they had been so long alone in the lower depths, the fallen had made their own kingdom there and declared themselves lords of that place. From the first days of their captivity, they had ignited false stars on the roof of Hell to make a mockery of what was above. They had dug dead rivers and gouged seas that smoked and blistered; they had raised cruel hills; they had set forests of iron beneath an igneous moon.

  This was allowed them in their exile, but one thing was forbidden.

  To engender life had been reserved unto the Lord of Hosts, and the numbers of the alchemy of life had been hidden from the angels.

  Yet on the eve of the New War, the fallen under Lucifer had set their hands to the task of creation, and tried to bring forth fresh invention; but so far below the Lord were they that they could not quicken any new thing, but only the dead; and they wedded dead flesh together with the souls of the damned and made both live again; and they took the fishes of the sea and river and the creatures of the mountain and woods and corrupted them, made them monstrous in size and quick to do harm; because none of these could propagate, save by killing, the devils set their hands to each one, working in secret until they made an arsenal of unclean flesh against the day they might release their bestiary into the world of men.

  That day had come.

  The vaults of the seas opened in the dark that was blacker than ink, and the devils’ children snaked up into the rivers that veined between the cities of men; and the vaults of the mountains opened, and heinous things walked down the roads that bound the towns to one another; and great was the suffering of the seed of Adam.

  And the Lord made no answer.

  And still the war in Heaven persisted, and neither could the wicked angels break through, nor those of God drive them down.

  So one of the fallen, whose name was Baal-Zebuth, said, “Let us wear their greatest men like skins, and when they speak, they will speak our words; they will speak of wars and purgings, and of dashing the babe’s head. We will turn their understanding so they make their Christ a god of war, and we will cause them to set navies to the seas and armies under the moon with generals whose eyes glow like brands, and we will stir Turk and Christian alike to madness by our own deeds, and by our own hands will we hasten the death of men.”

  And great was the noise of flies around him as he walked the earth.

  And Ra’um walked with him with his twelve eyes blazing.

  And Bel-phegor shook off his mane and walked in armor, received at the tables of wrathful men, who knew him not.

  And the damned who had deceived men as false prophets rose again, and again lied.

  And the Lord made no answer.

  TWENTY

  Of the Monk in White

  “We have to build a raft.”

  “What?”

  “A raft. Build one or find one.”

  Thomas looked at the girl.

  A brisk wind had just blown a shower of brown leaves on them, and one perfectly shaped maple leaf, stippled red on its points, perched in Delphine’s hair. Thomas removed it and chewed on the stem, trying to keep his balance in the pitching cart; the road, if it could be called that after the rains had furrowed it, was quite rough here. He had found them near dawn. They had gone to town together, but now they were in the cart again and moving south and east. His head throbbed from the blow it had sustained last night; he touched the egg above his eye, remembering how gently the girl had wiped the dried blood from it. He was drunk. The priest, bearing two black eyes from catching the girl, was worse. And the girl was not sober.

  Their tour through the ruins of Auxerre had yielded a cask of good wine; it had been the priest who spied it among the timbers and wattle of a fallen wine shop. It had not seemed wrong to him to take it, nor to ask the girl to help him roll it past the fallen buildings, past the dead Penitents (all of them, it seemed—none of those zealots moved among the injured and dazed, though he saw one hand clutching a hooked whip, its owner obscured beneath stones). He had said Mass again for the first time in months, given last rites, issued wafer, issued wine. The remaining Auxerrois had even helped hoist the barrel into his cart; they had seen the angel, too. Even though catastrophe had visited them, the long months of death and suffering at last seemed to mean something: Good was fighting back. They knew the girl was blessed. As the cart pulled away, a woman had touched Delphine’s sleeve with a hand as yellow as an onion’s skin, and its proper color had been restored, though Delphine had been unaware of this.

  And now this talk of a raft.

  “Did you dream this, daughter?” the priest said, belching terribly at the end of it. His teeth were darker than his skin.

  “No. I thought about it. The devil on the road said we would still be clip-clopping around at Christmas. I thought, too, about the wine. It’s very good wine.”

  “It is,” both men agreed.

  “But what about the wine?” Thomas asked.

  “Oh. Yes. They ship it on the river. It would take too long on a cart. Rivers are fast.”

  “Some rivers are fast.”

  “They’re all faster than a mule because they don’t rest.”

  The priest nodded, impressed.

  “Agreed. But the Yonne doesn’t go to Avignon,” Thomas said, spitting out his leaf.

  “The Rhône does,” said the priest.

  The girl filled her bowl again, drinking while the men spoke. Thomas took the spoon of ram’s horn from his hat and chewed it, punctuating his words by poking its gently gnawed end at Père Matthieu.

  “What’s the closest city on the Rhône?”

  “Lyon.”

  “That’s far.”

  “A river feeds it, though. I can’t remember the name.”

  “The name doesn’t matter. What near town sits on it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You know wine. What wine comes from Burgundy?”

  “Burgundy,” the priest said, blinking his bloodshot eyes.

  “Don’t be funny. Think.”

  “I’m too drunk to think.”

  “Then just say something. A wine town. Burgundy.
Quick!”

  “Auxerre.”

  Thomas winced, thinking about their exit across the Pont Roi Louis, where many of those fleeing the town had been hacked apart by something stronger than a man.

  “We’re drinking the last from Auxerre. Name another.”

  “Arbois? No, that’s Franche-Comté. And it’s straw-colored.”

  “The river?”

  “No. The wine. From Arbois.”

  “What’s its river?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Thomas grunted. “Name another.”

  “Beaune.”

  “That’s Burgundy, all right. But what’s the river?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The conversation continued like that until the girl fell asleep, the priest got too drunk to guide the mule, and Thomas took the reins. Soon the road forked, and a sign stood by the right fork, which led into very pretty woods whose leaves were going soft yellow and startling red.

  VÉZELAY MORTIS EST

  The priest was puking over the side, oblivious, trying vainly not to get any on his robes. Thomas had enough Latin for this one, though, and he mouthed each syllable.

  VÉZELAY IS DEAD

  “We won’t be going to Vézelay,” Thomas said, though only the mule, who twitched an ear in his direction, seemed to hear him. “Hope you weren’t counting on finding a nice jenny-ass there, you grass-eating bastard.”

  The mule made no reply.

  “I hope you don’t take this personally, but if we build a raft, you’re not coming aboard. Except in our bellies.”

  “Not the mule,” the girl slurred, half asleep, halfheartedly striking Thomas with the back of her hand.

  “The Saône,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The Saône feeds the Rhône,” she said dreamily. “This road goes to Beaune. Another road goes to Chalon-sur-Saône. Beaune-Saône-Rhône.”

  “Beaune-Saône-Rhône,” Thomas repeated. “Even I can remember that.”

  “But we’ll steer around Beaune.”

  “Why?”

  “Monsters there,” she said, drawing her blanket around her head against the chill.

  And she slept.

  Père Matthieu woke in the abandoned grain loft he shared with Thomas and the girl, putting his hands immediately to his head, which was splitting. Thomas’s snore, a deep, bullish noise, shook the priest to his bones, and his mouth was so dry he thought it was full of nettles.