The Mongoliad: Book Three tfs-3

by Neal Stephenson

  Ferenc spoke up, and she heard her name mentioned. Father Rodrigo swung his head toward Ferenc like a dog finding a scent, and the priest blinked heavily as he listened to Ferenc’s words. “Yes,” Father Rodrigo said, “I do remember you.” He straightened, his face brightening, losing its slackness as he tightened his mouth into a smile. “Have you come to join us on our crusade?”

  Ocyrhoe glanced at the cup sitting on the satchel. It had lost some of its luster, as if the sun-which had been previously shining on it-had slipped behind a cloud. It was, as Frederick had mentioned, a silver cup, and not one of gold. She shivered, feeling nothing but apprehension about the cup. “What… what crusade?” she inquired, using the question to cover her nervousness. To give him more time to remember her because she was still not sure he did.

  The first day she had ever laid eyes on the priest had been at the market near the Porta Tiburtina, and he had stared at her as if he knew her. His gaze had been wild and feverish, and while he seemed to recognize nothing else, he had known her. Now, his eyes were unclouded by fever, but he kept peering at her as if he thought she were someone else. So little has changed since that day, she thought, and yet so much too.

  “The cedars,” the priest said, his voice slurring. “I must save the cedars.”

  Ocyrhoe glanced around, not seeing the sorts of trees he was talking about. “Father Rodrigo,” she said softly. “This crusade is-”

  “What?” Father Rodrigo answered with a harsh, mocking laugh-unlike any sound she’d heard him make before. “I am the Summus Pontifex Ecclesiae Universalis. I am bound to serve God, and He has revealed His plan to me. To me. Not Fieschi. Not any of the others. I was the one who carried His message from Mohi. I was the one who suffered. I am the one who is strong enough to carry it farther, and that is what I intend to do.”

  “Why?” Ocyrhoe asked in a plaintive voice. She wandered closer to Ferenc, resting a hand on his shoulder. He stirred beneath her, a shudder running through his body. “You want Ferenc and I to join you on this crusade, but where are you taking us? What are we supposed to do?”

  “You are supposed to serve God. We are going to drive out the infidels.”

  “How?”

  He gestured at the cup which brightened visibly as he paid attention to it. “The Grail will provide a way,” he said thickly. His hand shook.

  Ocyrhoe recalled Lena’s words back in the room Father Rodrigo had stayed in at the Castel Sant’Angelo. What you need will be offered to you, in unexpected ways and times. Father Rodrigo had the same faith. But she and Frederick had talked about faith too, in relation to the Grail. In a flash, she understood why Frederick had talked her into chasing after Father Rodrigo. Her faith in something else might be strong enough to withstand the Grail.

  Her faith in her sisters.

  She walked past Ferenc and knelt on the ground beside Father Rodrigo’s satchel. “Will it?” she asked, peering up at him. She reached out her hand to touch the cup.

  “Don’t touch it,” Father Rodrigo shrieked. He lunged for her, meaning to shove her away from the cup, and she spun away from him. She tumbled across the satchel, knocking the cup over.

  Father Rodrigo loomed over her, his face blotted with shadows. “You will not take what is mine! You will not!”

  She raised her hands defensively, alarmed by the change that had come over him. The cup rolled away from her, and she saw that it was nothing more than a plain silver cup. Identical to the one Frederick had drunk from during the meal they had shared. She kicked it and it bounced across the dry ground.

  “God owns me. Only an agent of the Devil would try to take what belongs to God,” Father Rodrigo shouted as he scrambled for the cup.

  Ferenc finally shook himself free of whatever torpor had held him in place, and he grabbed Father Rodrigo, keeping the priest from reaching the cup. “Father Rodrigo,” he pleaded, trying to get the priest’s attention.

  Father Rodrigo whirled, his hand striking Ferenc across the face. “Stand not in the way of God, heretic,” he screamed. “Vade post me Satana!”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  The Flight of the Khan

  The shaman’s saddle was too narrow for Ogedei, and he perched on it awkwardly, half sliding off the side of the pony as it ran as fast as its short legs could manage. It was a bony animal too, and it ran with a stiff-legged gait that made Ogedei’s teeth clack together noisily.

  Chucai’s powerful stallion was already pulling away from him, and the Khagan wanted to shout after his advisor. How dare Chucai leave him? But his own nauseating fear provided the answer: Chucai wanted to live too.

  He was running away. He could not pretend otherwise as he bounced atop a short-haired pony, shrieking at it to run faster. It didn’t matter what sort of image he presented to his men. None of them were pointing and laughing. They were all either dead or engaged in the same headlong rush for safety.

  A long arrow caught Chucai’s horse in the side, and it plowed into the ground. Chucai remained in the saddle as it fell, and as Ogedei bounced past, he saw why. The long arrow had gone through Chucai’s leg first, pinning him to the horse.

  The last Ogedei saw of Chucai was the other man straining and tugging to get his other leg out from beneath the fallen horse. His beard was tangled too, streaked with blood, and Chucai was shouting something in Chinese, a language Ogedei had not heard him use for a long time.

  Ogedei didn’t stop. He kept riding. He told himself it was what Chucai would have insisted he do.

  The empire was all that mattered.

  As the short-legged pony bounded out of the trees, Ogedei saw two things simultaneously that filled him with equal parts elation and dread. Directly ahead of him, he spotted a number of his Torguud. They were galloping fast toward him, and he raised his arm to signal to them. To me! he willed. Your Khagan requires your aid. And then, a flicker of light drew his eyes left, and he squinted against the sun flashing off metal armor.

  Armored men, on horseback.

  There were only four of them, but they came so relentlessly, their chargers galloping with such strength and determination, that his elation vanished beneath a wave of tremulous panic. Their armor gleamed, their faces were covered with blank masks of shining steel, and the crests on their chests appeared to be fiery roses.

  The quartet split-the two on the right angling toward his approaching Torguud, the others thundering toward him. He lashed the pony mercilessly, trying to make it run faster, but he could feel it laboring heavily beneath him already.

  Behind him, stragglers of his hunting party emerged from the woods, and they rapidly overtook his lumbering pony, reaching him a few scant moments before the two armored riders did. Metal clashed, a horse screamed, and two of his men were down. The armored riders surged through his paltry host, wheeling their mounts about for another charge. A Darkhat fired an arrow at one of the two attackers, but it skipped off the man’s helm without causing him any harm.

  An armored rider came at him, and Ogedei fumbled for his sword, his fingers slipping off the hilt. The charger’s hooves pounded against the ground, and he could hear its heavy breathing. He finally got his hand on his hilt, pulled the sword halfway, and realized he wasn’t going to get it free in time.

  He looked up, deciding he would rather see his death coming, and was suddenly buffeted as another horse and rider passed between him and the approaching rider. The armored man’s horse wheeled, nearly throwing its rider, and Namkhai, suddenly between him and his death, battered at the armored man with the long pole of the Spirit Banner.

  Namkhai swept the banner around again, and the armored man hesitated for a second. Ogedei could not fathom why the man faltered. Had he felt the power of the banner? Had he seen the endless sea of horses that lived within the banner? Did he realize how pointless his efforts were? The empire was endless. It would run from horizon to horizon, from mountain to sea. It could not be stopped.

  “Ride!” Namkhai screamed at him, startling him out of
the ecstatic fervor that had suddenly gripped him. Namkhai hit the rider one last time with the banner, knocking him out of his saddle, and then his Torguud protector was reaching for him. Ogedei let go of the pony’s reins and swung his right leg out of the way as Namkhai brought his horse closer. He leaned over, grabbing a fistful of Namkhai’s trousers, and with a grunt he pushed off from the pony’s saddle. He floated through empty space for an instant, and he was certain he had mistimed his leap, and then the back of Namkhai’s horse slammed against his thighs. He snaked his arm around Namkhai’s waist as the horse, now carrying twice the weight, stumbled briefly before finding its balance again.

  Screaming a wordless battle cry as if he dared any man or spirit to stand before him, Namkhai urged his horse to run harder. The ground flashed beneath them, and Ogedei buried his face against Namkhai’s broad chest, hanging on for dear life.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  The Strong Heart

  Orsini strode toward the waiting room. He was agitated by Cardinal Fieschi’s messenger, and while he had immediately sent the captain of his guard off to mobilize his men, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was chasing a wild horse that would never be tamed. Fieschi had made promises, and at first it seemed that the Cardinal might actually be able to produce the results he said he could, but in the last few days, Orsini was beginning to doubt that the Cardinal had the situation under control. And if the Cardinal wasn’t running things, who was?

  A priest waited at the door, and when Orsini nodded, he pulled the bolt back and opened the door for the Senator. Orsini took a deep breath and assumed his most imposing attitude-shoulders back, gut forward, forehead glowering-as he entered the room.

  The woman stood across from the door, quietly dignified, arms folded across her chest. She gave him such a look of knowing expectation that he almost stumbled, even though the floor was smooth and even. The muscles in his legs twitched, an autonomic response to an instinctual nervousness.

  “Senator,” she said.

  Orsini tried to regain his swagger. “Lady,” he replied, not quite mocking and yet still respectful. He stopped just inside the door, a wider stance than felt quite natural. He mirrored her, mockingly, by crossing his arms across his chest.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” she said. “I am Lena, recently of the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, though I am not bound to his court.”

  Orsini sneered, catching the inflection of her words. “You are one of them,” he said. “A Binder.”

  “I am,” Lena replied. “And I have come to ask of my sisters who live in Rome.”

  Orsini dismissed the sneer from his lips. “What of them?” he shrugged.

  “You are the Senator of Rome,” Lena reminded him. “You don’t know your city well enough to know what has happened to my kin-sisters? Or is there a different excuse you would like to offer?”

  “I don’t have to offer you anything,” Orsini snapped. “You are an agent of the Holy Roman Emperor, and given his recent attitude toward Rome and the surrounding cities, he has almost declared himself a true enemy of the people.”

  “Almost,” Lena said, emphasizing only one of his words. “The resolution of that question may hinge on your answer.”

  Orsini chewed on his lower lip, gauging the woman before him. Was she bluffing? Would Frederick dare invade Rome simply to find out what had happened to a few witches, none of whom would truly be missed.

  “The Cardinals have elected a new Pope,” she said, changing the subject when it was clear he wasn’t going to answer her question.

  “A new Pope,” Orsini said. “Yes, I know. They finally chose one yesterday.”

  She shook her head. “No, earlier this morning. Castiglione is their chosen man.”

  Orsini glowered a little longer at the woman, and when she was unmoved by his best impression of his namesake, he relented. “Of course he is,” Orsini sighed, wondering how this disaster could have happened. What happened to the crazy priest that would have been so pliable? he wondered, and then his stomach tightened with doubt. Had this been Fieschi’s game all along?

  “He has taken the name Celestine IV,” Lena continued.

  “Is that all you wanted to tell me?” Orsini asked, tiring of this woman. “That Castiglione has been elected Pope? What does this matter to me?”

  “It matters a great deal,” Lena said with a smile, and Orsini found himself disliking her smile. “My sisters,” she repeated. “Where are they?”

  “You don’t belong here,” he snarled at her. “You are a spy for the Holy Roman Emperor. You are an agitator and a witch. I am going to call for my guards. You can join your-” He caught himself, barely in time.

  “Ah,” Lena said. “They are still alive. Well, that is fortuitous news.”

  Orsini waved his hand at her, no longer interested in hearing what she had to say. At the very least, he thought as he turned away to call for the guard, I can ransom her back to Frederick.

  “Senator Matteo Rosso Orsini,” Lena commanded. He found himself stopping and turning back to face her, against his better judgment.

  She put her closed hand over her heart. “Senator Orsini,” she said. “I am bound to you with a message from Pope Celestine IV.”

  “What nonsense is this?” he demanded, striding toward her. Intending to shut her up-forcefully, if necessary.

  “The Pope wishes to inform you that his first act as Pope is to express his displeasure at the treatment of the Cardinals in the Septizodium by ordering that you be excommunicated from the Holy Roman Church.”

  She smiled as she finished. Orsini tried to speak, but found he could not even open his mouth. An oak plank smashing him on the head would not have left him more stupefied than this.

  Lena, after a polite pause, announced, “Thus delivered of my message, I am like the wind, unbound here but bound elsewhere.”

  She paused again, but he could do nothing more than stare at her, stunned. Excommunicated…

  “I would expect that the Pope might reconsider his order,” she said pleasantly as she started to walk toward him, “if you were to demonstrate some contrition for your acts of heinous torture against the citizens of Rome. Since the Cardinals are no longer imprisoned in the Septizodium, perhaps you might think of some other poor souls who have been wrongly imprisoned.”

  She stopped and looked up at him. “Now, do you remember what happened to my kin-sisters?” she asked.

  He found himself nodding dumbly.

  “Good,” she said. “I look forward to hearing news of their release. I might even be inclined to beg clemency from His Holiness on your behalf.”

  God believes your heart is strong enough.

  At first, there had only been tiny pinpricks of light, shards of sun that dazzled as they fell on the leaves. But when they reached the vale of endless tents, the light had grown stronger. When Rodrigo glanced through the open flaps of tents, thinking he would see nothing but shadows, all he saw were glowing faces. Cherubic angels peering out at him, their rotund moon faces swollen with honey-sticky joy. And when he met the Emperor, the man who spoke with the voice of a black bird, he could no longer bear to raise his eyes toward the sky. Even though there was a heavy canvas tent over his head, he could still see the fiery explosions of God’s spinning eyes.

  As he grabbed the cup, all the light went away. It was as if there was a vast hole in the bottom of the vessel, a sucking abyss that began to inhale deeply as he squeezed the metal stem in his hand. He could see the light streaming toward the cup. It flowed across the table like water running uphill; it dribbled out of Ferenc’s eyes in fat, squirming tears; it fell from the sparkling wheels in the sky in sheets of fiery rain. The cup continued to inhale, seemingly unperturbed by the quantity of light it was consuming, until there was nothing left but shadows.

  In the resonant darkness, the black bird kept shrieking, and Rodrigo heard answering calls, the echoes of all the crows and vultures from the battlefield. Each voice splintered in
to tinier voices, like the cries of lost children-the orphans of Mohi, of Legnica, of every city the Mongol horde had destroyed in its relentless quest to trample the world.

  Make them stop! he pleaded with the darkness. Give them peace. Embrace them. But if God was in the darkness, he did not respond to Rodrigo’s prayer. The priest teetered on the edge of the abyss, the one that had nearly consumed him once before, buffeted by the screams and cries of all the dead birds.

  His feet slipped, but he did not plummet into the empty vastness. He hung, dangling over the abyss, one hand wrapped tightly around the stem of the cup, and it did not move. Grunting and straining, he reached up and put both hands on it.

  He remembered everything perfectly: his catechisms from the seminary, the holy words of God writ in the Bible, the insights gleaned from Brother Albertus, the last benediction from the Archbishop before the armies of the West were devastated on the plain near Mohi, the words spoken to him by the fair-haired angel at the farm. Signa hodie lumen vultus tui super me… It was only through arduous reflection upon everything he could recall that he could understand God. That he could understand his place in God’s design.

  There was still a glimmer of light in the cup. Every muscle in his body groaned as he raised himself so that he could sip from the floating cup. He put his lips against the warm metal, and as his flesh made contact with the Grail, it tipped toward him. A golden streak of light flowed into his open mouth, and he drank it eagerly, accepting it into his body, into his soul.

  When he exploded, he knew he was the exultation of light that he had seen in his vision. The endless wheels within wheels were his existence, shattered and strewn throughout the profusion of possibilities, destinies, histories, implications, and connections. He whirled, each particle of his being shivering with an ecstatic thrill. He saw everything and heard nothing.

  As the wheels began to slow, as his being began to coalesce once more, he started to weep.