The Mongoliad: Book Three tfs-3

by Neal Stephenson

  The bear never had to go far to find food, and for a little while, Gansukh wondered if the Darkhat had been wrong and the bear had been dead for many years. The proliferation of life in the valley was, instead, a testament to the lack of predators.

  The sun moved overhead as they reached the rocky spur that signified the split between the two ends of the valley. The hunting party paused briefly-some dismounting to piss, others chewing a quick snack of dried meat-and then continued to the left, moving past the outcropping of rock that split the valley into two forks.

  The forest thinned out, and the trees gave way to fields of rocks and the scraggly bushes of the steppe. They started to come across piles of bear scat; after the first one, everyone sat up a little straighter in their saddles, and bows were strung and readied. As the hunting party approached the end of the valley, the hillsides forced them to ride closer together, and there was some confusion among the riders as to who would lead.

  Ogedei finally pushed his horse to the front, silencing Namkhai and the chief hunter’s arguments with a curt shake of his head. The Khagan readied his spear, and the hunting party crept forward.

  One of the Darkhat pointed out the dark hole of the bear’s cave, and the hunting party came to a halt. A hushed conference was held, debating the best way to approach the bear’s cave, and Gansukh sat a little ways off. His opinion wasn’t needed, and he would only be in the way of the Khagan’s triumphant kill. It was his job to watch now, to be a party to Ogedei’s triumph.

  Alchiq’s horse ambled up to his. The gray-haired hunter was peering intently up at the dark cave. He grunted, catching Gansukh’s attention, and then pointed.

  Gansukh looked, shading his eyes from the sun to see what Alchiq was pointing at. There was a clear trail up the slope, the route the bear took time and again, and it looked like there was a flat shelf in front of the cave where something caught his eye.

  Gansukh looked at Alchiq, who shrugged as he slid off his horse. Carrying his bow ready, the gray-haired hunter darted forward, leaping from cover to cover as he approached the cave. Swearing under his breath, Gansukh glanced over at the clustered hunting party, wondering if anyone had noticed Alchiq. No one had, and with a final curse, he climbed down from his horse and followed the gray-haired hunter.

  They were too far below the cave to see properly, but Gansukh had seen what had caught Alchiq’s attention: a wooden spar, jutting up at an angle that didn’t seem natural.

  As he ran after Alchiq he heard Namkhai shout behind him. He ignored the Torguud captain’s cry, and dogged Alchiq’s heels as the gray-haired hunter raced toward the cave. They scrambled up the slope together, no longer caring to move silently. The hunting party was making enough noise now to alert anything that might be waiting for them up at the cave.

  Breathing heavily, Gansukh reached the flat shelf at the cave a half step behind Alchiq, and he came to a sudden stop as he saw what was waiting for them.

  The body of a Great Bear was crucified upon huge crossed logs driven into the ground in front of the cave. Its front legs splayed out, arrows driven into its paws. Its head was held in place by a length of rope. The beast’s tongue protruded from its mouth in an obscene and unnatural twist.

  Alchiq slowly walked up to the dead beast. His head was almost level with the bear’s shoulders; directly in front of him was a long shaft jutting from the bear’s chest. Gansukh stared at the object, uncomprehendingly.

  It looked like an arrow, but it was the longest arrow he had ever seen.

  Alchiq turned around, his eyes restlessly scanning the hillside around them, searching for something that, judging from the savage grin on his face, he had been expecting.

  “They’re here,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  A Binder’s Choice

  In the wake of the Cardinal’s departure from the Emperor’s tent, Frederick waved his hands and his guards withdrew. In a few moments, only he and Ocyrhoe remained, and he gestured for her to join him at the narrow table where several plates of food were arrayed. She hesitated, awkwardly aware of the ragged condition of her clothing and the matted tangles of her hair. The Emperor’s clothing was made of silk, and she could only imagine what it was like to wear such opulent clothing. She felt like the city rat she was, transported into an unknown wilderness, a forest so dense with trees and brush she could barely see the sky. So unlike Rome. So unlike anything she had ever known.

  The Emperor sat on one of the stools beside the table and began to eat: salted pork, grapes, slivers of sliced fruit, hunks of dark bread. Her mouth watered as she drifted toward the table. “Sit,” Frederick said. “Eat.” He poured water from a jug into a plain cup. Into another cup he poured a measure of wine. “Earlier today I had a meal similar to this one with your friends,” he said, ignoring her reluctance to join him. He indicated the cups on the table with a piece of meat. “We drank from some of my finer tableware, which would normally be completely unremarkable but for an odd bit of roguish sleight of hand.” He stared at her intently as if she should know what he was talking about.

  She shook her head.

  “The priest truly does think he is in possession of the Holy Grail,” Frederick said without further preamble. “What do you think of such nonsense?”

  “I know very little of such things, Your Majesty,” Ocyrhoe said, her hand darting out for a grape.

  Frederick grunted and stared off into space for a few moments. “He is a curious fellow, your priest. One moment, he seems quite harmless; the next, sadly broken from his experience at Mohi; and the next…” He shook his head slightly. “I have met my share of zealots, little Binder, and most of them cannot hide their insanity. They are like moths that have been blinded by a candle. Father Rodrigo, on the other hand, concerns me. If he were a moth, he would be blind, burned, and still insistent on leaping into the flame again.” He picked up his cup and sipped from it. “And he doesn’t want to go alone.”

  Ocyrhoe didn’t know what to say. The Emperor’s assessment of Father Rodrigo made her stomach knot. She reached for the cup of water and drank from it slowly.

  “We were having a perfectly pleasant conversation this morning,” Frederick continued, “albeit one that was marred by the occasional outlandish remark concerning apocalyptic prophecies and divine inspiration, and then the priest produced a cup from his satchel and announced it was the Holy Grail.” Frederick smiled. “I laughed at him, I must admit, which was probably not the most circumspect reaction, but I was taken aback by his claim. He was, after all, trying to convince me that one of my own cups was the holy chalice.” He tapped a fingernail against the rim of his cup. “Just like this one. I offered him wine, and when my back was turned, he slipped the cup into his satchel so that he could produce it again.” He shook his head. “I knew it was my own cup. I had had a boy bring three into the tent. I had one, there was a second sitting on this table, and the third-well, the third was in Father Rodrigo’s hand and he was telling me that it was the Holy Grail and, with it, he was going to call a crusade against the infidels and nonbelievers. And by God, I believed him.”

  Ocyrhoe nodded slowly. “I saw him preaching to a crowd at the marketplace,” she said. “They weren’t shouting at him or throwing vegetables. They were listening, and he had a cup there too. I could feel the mood of the crowd change when he showed it to them. They became more…” She searched for the right word.

  “Entranced?” Frederick provided.

  “Yes, entranced. They would have followed him if the Vatican’s guards hadn’t intervened.” She wrinkled her nose. “But, I saw the cup fall,” she said. “He dropped it, and I don’t remember where it rolled. I don’t know that anyone retrieved it.” She looked at Frederick’s cup. “And it was gold. Not silver.”

  “Yes,” said Frederick absently. “And the one he produced this morning was silver at first, but it appeared to change color…”

  Taking advantage of Frederick’s inattention, Ocyrhoe snatched a piece of the me
at from the trencher and shoved it into her mouth. She was not used to pork-the unpleasant smell of it hung over the whole camp-and her mouth cringed from the heavy salting, but she chewed it nonetheless. She groped for her cup, gulping water to help wash down the dry meat. None of this stopped her from reaching for another piece.

  Frederick watched her eat, the corner of his mouth turning up in mild amusement. “We used to be friends,” he said, “Cardinal Fieschi and I. I used to have a much less… antagonistic relationship with Rome. I went on a crusade for the Church, in fact. It was the only crusade since our initial conquest of Jerusalem that could be considered a victory for the Church, and I did it with very little bloodshed. Does the Pope reward me for such a victory? No. He excommunicates me. Twice.” He shook his head. “And now this disaster in Rome: the sede vacante, this strange Pope who may not be Pope, the disappearance of the Binders in Rome-oh, yes, I know about your missing kin-sisters-and, finally, the question of the Cup of Christ. What am I to make of this… oddity that Father Rodrigo placed on my table? That entranced members of my camp?”

  He drummed his fingers on the table, idly chewing on his lip as he thought. Ocyrhoe kept eating, emboldened now by the Emperor’s mental distance.

  “I fear Fieschi will be Pope someday, and at which time I will lose the friendship of a Cardinal and gain the enmity of a Pope,” Frederick said with a sigh. “Though I admit to some culpability in straining that friendship. I do admire Cardinal Fieschi’s self-control in not forcing himself upon the Church at this time, though I guess I can’t blame him. This election was a fucking disaster from the beginning.”

  Ocyrhoe choked on her piece of meat, and it was only after gulping the rest of her water that she was able to breath easily again. “What do you know about my sisters?” she finally managed.

  Frederick nodded. “I’m sure Senator Orsini was simply following orders, blindly being led by a hand that he thinks will continue to feed him, but he is, in the end, very provincial in his thinking. Which would be more ironic-given his status in Rome, that once great center of civilization-were it not for the larger game afoot.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “What did Lena tell you when she sent you back to me?”

  “She… she didn’t,” Ocyrhoe stuttered. “The Cardinal ordered me to come along.”

  “He did, did he?” Frederick smiled. “And she said nothing to you before you left?”

  Ocyrhoe tried to remember anything that Lena might have imparted to her that would be worthy of the Emperor’s notice, and she couldn’t recall anything specific. “She said I needed to leave the city, and when I said that I couldn’t because of the guards, she told me to be patient. Something would happen that would aid me.”

  “And it did, in the person of the Cardinal. Not what you expected, was it?”

  “Very little has been since… since my sisters vanished, Your Majesty.”

  “Yes, well, I expect it will get stranger still yet,” Frederick said wryly. “Do you believe that the cup Father Rodrigo carries is actually the Grail?”

  He seemed very focused on that question, and Ocyrhoe wished she knew what she was supposed to say. “I do not know, Your Majesty.”

  “I suspect Fieschi was going to try to bind you to retrieving it for him,” Frederick said. “Though I am not quite certain why he thought that might be possible.”

  “I don’t understand. Bind me how?”

  “To a message. In the same way that you were bound by Cardinal Somercotes to bring me news of the Cardinals’ captivity.”

  Ocyrhoe did not understand what he meant and she was uncertain if she could confess that or simply play along. She wished this situation were a dream from which she might will herself awake. Her very sinews felt as if they were about to leap out of her body and run back to Rome, leaving her a pile of enervated bones on the rug-covered ground of the pavilion.

  Frederick, sensing her tension, laughed and slapped his leg. The joyous expression was strange on his unhandsome face, but she believed his jocularity was freely expressed. “Let us not talk of being forced into a course of action,” he said dryly. “Let us consider a choice freely made. Hmmm?” When she nodded, he continued. “Let us presume for a moment that you knew where Father Rodrigo and Ferenc had gone and that you were allowed to join them. Knowing what you know about the priest and his mission-which, I grant, is very little-would you be inclined to join him or stop him?

  “How… how would I stop him?” she asked.

  “You saw him in the marketplace. Do you think the guards would have been able to remove him from the crowd if he hadn’t dropped the cup?”

  “It frightens you,” she said, sensing the truth of her words as they came out of her mouth.

  Frederick sat back on his stool, his face becoming still and unreadable. “I am concerned, little one,” he said somewhat brusquely. “Do not conflate such into more than it is.”

  “You want me to steal the Grail,” she said, the Emperor’s intentions as clear as if he had spoken them aloud.

  “So does Cardinal Fieschi,” he said. His expression was complicated to read now: at once trying to remain friendly and confiding, but a sternness had settled on his brow. “Which of us would you obey?”

  Ocyrhoe looked down, cowed but determined to maintain her position. “Why must I obey either of you?” she asked. “The Senator took my sisters and the Cardinal did little to stop him. You profess to knowing of their disappearance too, and what have you done to aid them? And yet you ask me to thieve for you? For the Church?” She shook her head.

  Frederick remained still, studying her, and she focused on her hands to avoid his scrutiny.

  “If I were to tell you-to insist, as a matter of fact-that the cup that Father Rodrigo has taken is, indeed, nothing more than a cup from my table, would that not make his action thievery? If you were to believe the Cardinal’s clumsy rhetoric, whatever Father Rodrigo is carrying is Church property, property that has been stolen as well. You would be returning something that does not belong to the priest. Doing so would be the right thing to do, in fact, and I don’t think it is such an onerous thing for me to ask of you.”

  Ocyrhoe immediately looked up and stared at him, with the frank rudeness that usually only small children can get away with.

  “No? Then why don’t you do it yourself?” she asked, and when he didn’t answer immediately, she continued. “If retrieving this cup is such a simple duty, then why do both the Holy Roman Emperor and one of the most powerful Cardinals in Rome want me to do it? Do you think I am too simple to notice the contradiction? Do you think because I am female, or common, or young, that I don’t recognize hypocrisy and manipulation when I see it?” Amazed at her own brazenness, she quickly amended, “Your Majesty.” But she kept his gaze.

  Frederick was the one who looked away, blinking rapidly. “Christ Almighty,” he said to himself. “No wonder she arranged this.” He looked back at her, and grinned. “I apologize, young lady. Very well. I intended no offense, and I will prove it now by including you in my thoughts about these matters. Tell me, what do you think of this nonsense with the cup?”

  Ocyrhoe’s thin lips pressed together briefly to control a flaring of anger. “You are mocking me, Your Majesty,” she stated.

  He shook his head. “I’m not. Truly. I think the world of Lena”-he chuckled and shook his head-“and I would never mock one of her kin-sisters. Alas, I have been boorish enough to insult one, though, by implying she is simple, so please grant me the opportunity to make amends.”

  Ocyrhoe took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, willing her fearful indignation to subside enough so she might think straight. He really wanted to know her opinion and it was abundantly clear to her now that he wasn’t going to stop asking until she replied. “In the marketplace, I saw the priest hold up a cup as if it were a relic. But I was not very close to him, and from what I did see, it seemed to be shiny but it was otherwise unremarkable.” She tried to recall more details of the eve
nt in the marketplace: the way the crowd reacted to Father Rodrigo, the play of light on the object in his hand, the odd hollowness of his voice, the crawling sensation she felt in the back of her head. “But it did affect those who looked on it. The crowd thrilled at the sight of it,” she said slowly, swallowing a strange thickness at the back of her throat.

  “But you found it unremarkable?” Frederick asked.

  Ocyrhoe shook her head. “It had no power over me, if that is what you mean.”

  “Yes, that’s what I meant,” Frederick said. “While I was not as smitten by it as some in my camp, I must confess to being lulled by its presence. I knew it was a cup from my table, but such awareness did not make itself felt upon my mind until well after the priest had removed it from my sight. So, the question that continues to intrigue me is this: does the influence derive from the man or the cup?” He levered a finger at her. “What do you think of the man Rodrigo?” he asked.

  She grimaced, caught off guard by his brusque question. She squirmed under his gaze, not wanting to give him an answer, but knowing she couldn’t avoid doing so. “He is a good man,” she said carefully. “I think he has suffered a terrible injury. Not physically, but in his mind. I do not think he is a mystic or a prophet or anything like that. Something has not healed right in his head.”

  Frederick nodded. “How does this attraction work? If it stems not from the cup nor from his person, then how can you account for his power over the people?”

  Ocyrhoe shrugged. “How different is it from the influence any powerful ruler has over his subjects? Does it worry you because you feel it too? That you might be like the rest of us?” She was somewhat shocked by these words. She would not have spoken so bluntly to her own foster mother, and yet, here she was, speaking thusly to the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.