by David Waid
Teresa tore through the contents of the chest, tossing clothes in every direction until her fingers locked on the book. Someone shouted in German and she looked up to see the light of torches bobbing among the wagons, coming closer. Wrapping a hastily plucked piece of clothing around the book, she sat down by the door and shoved her feet into boots. Her cloak was lost in the wagon’s dark tumble. She grabbed one of the furs Father Hugh slept under, swept it around her shoulders and leapt out.
Crouched between the wagon where she slept and the one that stood behind it, she listened. The priest and his men were heading for the front of the merchant train — pursuing her, or so they thought. She would run for the back where horses were hobbled and tethered among the tents. Teresa darted out and around the next baggage wagon without seeing the man who stood there in the dark.
Crashing into him with a grunt, Teresa almost fell, but a rough hand gripped her shoulder and spun her up hard against the wagon’s wheel. A forearm pressed across her chest like a bar of iron and a blade touched her throat.
“Who is it?” asked a second silhouette, stepping up behind the first.
“The wine boy!” the man holding Teresa said. “Damn it, I nearly skewered you.” He stood back and Teresa recognized one of the merchant guards. Two others stood with him.
“What’s happening, boy? Speak quickly.”
“That way.” Teresa touched her throat. “Men in black cloaks. Big hats.”
“Beneath the wagon and stay there,” the guard said. He shoved her to the side and ran with the others in the direction Teresa pointed. She raced past wagons in the other direction. Shouts and yelling echoed down the long road and other guards ran toward the front of the line. Recognizing Teresa as the Builder’s apprentice, they ignored her.
She tore past one wagon, then another, ran alongside the mysterious Hansa woman’s vehicle and out into the space that separated it from the next in line. Light spilled from the door at the back and someone called to her in Genoese.
“Stop!”
Surprise brought Teresa up short. The Hansa woman stood in the doorway, apparently roused by the commotion, her silent handmaid two steps below. “What are you doing?” the woman said. “Are you mad?” She waved at Teresa, motioning for her to join them. “Come quick. It’s not safe.”
Part of Teresa wanted to go with this woman. She would be found in the wagon eventually — there could be little doubt — but at least the struggles and fear would end.
No. Surrendering to the priest only meant others could tell her what to do. Worse. It meant betraying Ignacio. All she could do was run. She needed to, wanted to, had to run. But what she did was stand still, shaking and afraid.
“What are you doing?” The woman said. “Come here.”
To Teresa’s right were the tents and horses. To her left, the shouting had stopped. The guards’ torches were gathered around the rumble of Bukhardus’ voice. In the huddle, she glimpsed Father Hugh and her heart sank. He would lie and they would believe him. She was no more than his apprentice, a child, he would say.
Behind her, across ten feet of snow-covered road, darkness beckoned between the tall trees of the wood. Teresa looked into the eyes of the Hansa woman and took one step backwards, then another. The woman’s mouth hung open, new words on her lips. Realization dawned in her face. Teresa was not coming inside the wagon, she was running away. Her mouth closed and the beckoning hand dropped to her side.
A deep, angry shout came from Teresa’s left. “There he is!”
Bukhardus, a head taller than the men around him, pointed his thick cudgel. A cloaked man with a broad-brimmed hat shouldered his way to the front of the merchant guards. Behind him came Father Hugh.
“Per Dio!” Teresa cried.
She wheeled for the woods, crashing through bushes. The Hansa woman’s light faded so that, weaving among thick trunks, Teresa followed barely visible patches of the white snow, staggering over unseen rises and dips. Branches whipped her arm as she tried to protect her face. Her other hand clamped the fur in place, elbow pressing the Maestro’s book to her ribs. Teresa tripped on a root, floundered, lost her footing.
When she stood, her face and clothes were covered in snow. Leaning against an oak, she panted, glancing behind. The three men in broad brimmed hats had come into the woods on her left — quiet, but sprinting and leaping in their eagerness. Each held a torch. No one else had joined the pursuit. She caught flickering sight of the men as they darted among the trees, cutting through the woods at an angle. They might not see her now, yet soon they would cross the snow-churn of her path, then it would be only a question of time. Teresa spun and ran.
She jumped, slid on her bottom across a fallen tree, and dashed through brambles that tore at her legs. The brambles gave way to clear, level ground where the trunks stood farther apart. Twenty paces on, she burst from the woods to stand at the top of an embankment. Below, row after orderly row of short orchard trees raced away in the dark. She darted down the little slope and into one of the lanes as cries exploded behind her. They’d found her trail.
Moments later, the men emerged. “There!” one of them shouted, pointing to where she hesitated on the edge of their light. Teresa ran again, but stumbled and fell. Getting up, she stumbled again, throat raw from the cold rasp of air. When Teresa fell a third time, she rose to her knees, but no farther. She sucked in breath, both arms wrapped around the precious book.
The men, too, stopped running. She shuffled around on her knees to watch them, ropes of snow-crusted hair hanging over her face. They walked slowly, like men walk who have every confidence, yet they paused at a distance, unwilling, it appeared, to come close after what they’d seen her do in the wagon. They were frightened of her.
Even through her panting breath, Teresa found she could smile. She watched them separate without a spoken word. One remained in place while the other two strode — each in a different direction — circling around her.
It made her angry. They had no right. No right to breed her family like animals. To raise them in a cage of secrets and lies. Or to chase her for trying to do what Ignacio asked. The first man continued to hold his ground while the other two moved out and around. She couldn’t see that first one’s eyes beneath the brim of his hat, but she felt his gaze.
“We have started poorly,” he called out, and she recognized his voice: the man who’d spoken with Father Hugh and tried to pull her from the wagon. The other two walked down lanes running parallel to her own, though they were careful to keep three rows of trees between themselves and Teresa. She tried to keep her eyes on them, but the other kept talking.
“Father Hugh tells me you are smart. Quick in your studies and kind in your heart. Well done, Teresa.” She caught glimpses of the two men’s long capes beneath the arms of trees on either side. Felt their regard through the branches.
“You are frightened, yet have no cause. We fear God and seek to serve his will. If you know the sacrifices Father Hugh has made to serve your family, you know he means only to help. That is true for us, as well.”
“Leave me alone!” she shouted.
“We cannot. We have nurtured you from a distance and know how powerful you may become. It is a terrible responsibility you carry, but we can help you bear it. Think of how that power can aid mankind. Think also what it might do to harm us if you joined the enemy — whether willingly or no.”
“Stay away from me. I have to go.”
The men on either side stepped cautiously, their brands held high and tree shadows turning across the ground like the arms of slow pinwheels. She caught glimpses of their torches, pale blue and saffron rippling over pitch-steeped wood. They stopped. Twisting from side to side, Teresa tried to keep all three in sight.
The first spoke again. “In Christ’s name, come with us.”
“Leave me alone!”
Teresa wished that she’d read a spell from the back of the grimoire. Something bloody and awful. Then she could do something they would regre
t. Instead, it might be she could shove one man with her power. Maybe. And perhaps she could snuff their torches, but what good were these tricks against grown men?
Her anger grew, but she started to repeat the priest’s chant. Instead of raging flames, her anger became the smooth surface of scalding oil. Some unspoken signal passed. The three men began walking toward her.
“No!” she yelled.
Their steps quickened.
Looking at the dancing heat of their torches, Teresa went still. The men began to run at her. She’d touched fire before to quench it, now she did the opposite. Teresa poured the oil of her anger, letting it flow through the magic, feeding the heat. They were halfway to her when the torches exploded.
A roiling burst engulfed each man. Their hats caught fire, and their cloaks, their shirts along the arms. Fire raced across open skin and they screamed. Momentum carried the men within several strides of Teresa, but they no longer came for her. They swatted at the heat, flung off their cloaks and hats and dropped to the ground, rolling in the snow. With the popping sound of resinous firewood, the closest trees burst into flame. A rank, mingled stench of burnt hair, wood and skin tinged the air.
From the ground, one of the men looked at Teresa, wide-eyed. Whupf! came an explosion, and flames erupted in the branches of yet another tree. And another. Teresa looked from one man and the next, their forms wavering in heat shimmers. Whoosh! Whupf! First one of them stood, then the next, staggering away from Teresa, smoke rising from their clothes. One looked at her and made the sign of the cross. The perimeter of blazing trees grew, the fire seeming to pursue the men, though Teresa did nothing now to control it.
If they said anything, Teresa couldn’t hear it. With a last look, faces stunned, the men spun away and lurched for the tall tree line of the woods. In the space of several heartbeats they disappeared beyond the orange-lit trunks and were gone. Teresa remained on her knees, stunned by what had just happened. She had conjured something powerful, terrifying. And she had saved herself. She alone. Against three grown men.
She was a geistmage.
Holding tight to the grimoire, she stood with her legs wobbling beneath her. A dozen orchard trees burned, balls of fire atop stunted trunks. Teresa thought of the burning bush from the Bible, only it wasn’t God’s voice that spoke here. The great roar and crackle of these flames could have only one author, and he was God’s rival.
Backing a step, she kept her eyes on the conflagration. The tree to Teresa’s right exploded into flame and she ducked in fear and surprise. Behind her, another one burst, its sudden heat on her back. But she no longer did the magic! The anger that possessed her earlier was gone, replaced with confusion as the leaves and branches of two more trees crackled into roaring sheets of fire.
The prickling of her flesh meant some magic was at work. Even in the heat, the sensations wound around her like cold touches of river current. For the first time since the men fled, fear clutched her belly. But she had a geistmage’s power; why should she fear?
Closing her eyes, Teresa opened her mind. Immediately, she recognized what she’d unleashed. The fury and fear of it were her own, as though a dark, unacknowledged piece of her soul had been set loose. She groaned, swayed on her feet. This…this thing came from inside of her — it was her. Remembering the man who’d looked at her and crossed himself, Teresa’s stomach churned.
Another tree caught fire and she reeled away. But what she had made followed, as though it had become aware of her, too. She could feel its nearness and, in her terror, she pictured it like a living thing, dragging along at the end of some oily tether, reluctant at first, then eager. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t.
It lurched closer, her own magic coming back to her. She panicked, imagining its hot, unclean touch. Teresa tried to summon up the priest’s chant, but now when she needed it, she could not recall the words.
The first touch, when it came, was like ice. Quickly, though, the sensation changed to burning, excruciating fire, and Teresa screamed. Yellow flames erupted along her arm, racing up her neck and blazing across the skin of her face. She threw herself down into the snow to smother it. It worked, but when she tried to sit up, her muscles and limbs failed and she lay on the ground shivering. Pain like she had never experienced seared her arm and face. The snow’s cold went through her until her body shook uncontrollably. Her thinking wasn’t coherent, just fragments.
Fire-lit snow crystals lay close to her eye, but she couldn’t move the snow away. Her hand would not answer the call and she gave up trying. Her eyes seemed to be closing. A booted foot stepped in front of her face and she couldn’t even turn her head to see whose it was. Sinking in darkness, Teresa knew she might be dying, disfigured at the least. She didn’t care. Her only thought was of that man looking at her in fear, making the sign of the cross.
25. Visit of the Tinker
Leinster
An old tinker tottered past the misshapen elm to the apothecary’s door as itinerants seemed to always do, as if this of all doors held the possibility of hope — the sale of some poorly carved and painted savior, perhaps a ribbon or two. Or simply alms and Christian charity. Something in that pathetic, yearning look sealed the man’s fate.
Sairshee met him at the door with her fair skin and a dusting of pale freckles. An unartful, lopsided smile quirked her mouth.
“Please come in.”
She dismissed the stammering apprentice caught dodging work behind bins of willow and birch bark. Later, she would box his ears. For now, the familiar butterflies of excitement and hope fluttered in her chest. She closed latches on both the front and back doors as the old man fumbled useless curios from his bag onto the counter with shaking hands.
“This one’s a beauty fer a lovely young lady sooch as yerself.” He hefted a necklace for her to admire, strung with ugly wooden beads that rattled in his grip, yet she said nothing.
“Ah, I know joost the thin’. Here now. Here now.” He seemed keenly aware of her disinterest. “I knows as ye’ll love some’at I have to offer.” Trying to draw from his bag an assortment of colored clay marbles, his hand trembled and they scattered across the countertop. “Ah, forgive me, la—.”
Sairshee put a hand on his arm and he stopped talking, head down. “I will buy your trifles,” she said. “But you look hungry. If you care for food, I will find bread, cheese and a stool in the pantry where you can sit out of the way.”
“Blessins of the saints be upon ye. That’d be a grand kindness.”
“I would do the same for any man who reminds me so much of my own da. Please come.”
Sairshee led him behind the counter to a trap door fixed with a great brass ring and they descended a steep set of stairs that ended before a door. A large black key opened it to reveal a narrow, low-ceilinged passage. Forming the outer edge of a circle, the tunnel bent back and away to darkness at either end of her candlelight. The air clung cold and moist, the rock beaded with damp. Starting left, she led him along the curve past several openings big enough for a man, but they continued on.
The old tinker cleared his throat. “Yer pantry lies this way?”
“Yes. Just ahead.”
Behind her, the old man croaked, “Lady…” but she kept walking with the candle and he was forced to follow. At the fourth opening, Sairshee halted. Moisture clung thicker near this mouth, the air stirring sluggishly around it.
“Through here.”
“Lady, I would like to go back.”
“Nonsense. We are almost there. You would not so casually throw aside my hospitality, would you?” The old man mumbled something, but when she entered, he followed.
She led him through a winding passage with more tight branches, like a turf maze. As they proceeded, a charnel smell grew, the stink of something dead, and the air became wetter still, so that one could almost see it, hanging luminous around the candle flame. Here and there they passed niches holding ancient, jawless skulls, stacked cheek to cheek, or thick bones arranged like c
ords of wood. It appeared the moisture had had its way, for some of the bones were fused in long, thin spills of something like translucent cave milk while others sprouted — from pitted nose and eye — albino roots that trailed down the wall, as delicate and kinked as spider legs.
The old man slowed. The space between he and Sairshee widened. When they arrived at another door, she drew forth her keys again and with a great, scraping effort, pulled it open. Fifteen feet away the tinker stood, leaning to the side, peering past her into the murk of the room.
“Ye’re kind, but I’ve troubled ye too much. I’ll return as I came, an’ it please ye.”
“It does not please me. I have not come all this distance only to return. Please take some food.”
“I’ve no wish to trouble ye, but ye’ve got the light.”
“Yes. And I will not be going back until you’ve been fed.”
He looked over his shoulder and back at her.
“God bless ye fer yer kindness, but I’ll find me own way back.”
He stepped backwards, eyes still on her, then swung around, groping, already struggling with the dark. Excitement and anger mingled as Sairshee hurried after him, sliding a knife from a fold of her dress. The old man lurched ahead, fast as he could through the narrow tunnel. His shadow, stick thin, staggered before him and she came behind, knife and candle. Her arm flashed up and then down, blade stabbing deep. The tinker screamed, stumbling to the floor.
“Lord, save me!”
His cries were of no concern; they rose up sharp and echoing, but sound could not leave the skein of tunnels, and soon she was done. Afterwards, flush with excitement, Sairshee dragged his corpse to the intended room, a small chamber with weeping walls.
She knelt now with her back straight and every muscle rigid as though locked in some physical struggle. Each implement of the ritual was placed precisely as it should be. The old man, looking oddly deflated, lay in the center of the room. All was ready for her to commence the incantation. The preparations, in fact, had been complete for some time…and still she remained as she was.