Fortress of Lost Worlds

by T. C. Rypel

  Could this Jew, Neriah be trusted to follow the decision of the majority? Could Salguero make him understand the depth to which the roots of evil had sunk? That they could not be expected to release their grip without being severed through combat?

  A struggling cluster of grunting bodies drew the captain’s ruminations to more immediate matters.

  The huge soldier Buey shouldered past the voussoirs of the narrow archway, bear-hugging a jostling figure who shouted muffled oaths from under his stifling hood. Sergeant Orozco, dressed like an ostler, stepped close behind.

  “We thought you’d better deal with this straightaway,” Orozco apprised as Buey pulled off the man’s cowl.

  It was Pablo Cardenas, the solicitor from Barbaso.

  “So—it’s true,” Cardenas shouted, tossing his head to chase his matted hair from one eye. “You have become a traitor to God as well as country.”

  Salguero’s face was crinkled with lines of confusion as he looked Cardenas over, unsure of what to say. When he at last spoke, it was to Orozco: “I didn’t say for you to conscript anybody. Cardenas, what is this all about?”

  “That’s a fine question for you to be asking me, captain. Not content with casting your lot with sorcerers and infidels, you now intend to besiege the Church in one of its strongholds. You’re an insane fanatic!”

  “We intend only to set certain injustices aright.”

  “Injustice? Injustices? What about you and that Japanese devil forcing me and my family to flee for our lives from your own army with your diabolical wiles? All I want to know is one thing: Why did you involve my children with witchery? Is that why that barbarian bastard you call amigo asked to see them that night last winter?”

  Father Marquez hissed and clapped in a frantic effort at controlling Cardenas’ volatile outburst. There were strangers—and a few soldiers—in the nave above their heads.

  Salguero’s voice cracked when he strove to answer such that it came out in a hoarse whisper. “What in hell are you talking about?”

  “Mind your tongue, senor,” the priest chided.

  “This thing,” Cardenas replied, his certainty shaken now. “This witch’s ornament they found in my children’s bedchamber—”

  He fumbled out the device from beneath his tunic. Smaller, and thus less finely detailed, it was nonetheless an exact duplicate of the wygyll medallion Gonji had carried.

  “We ran for our lives in the night,” Cardenas explained painfully. “I don’t know how we escaped them. I’ve had to put my family up in secret with distant relatives. I didn’t even dare tell them the reason we had run. All I could say was that the warlock’s horrors had driven us out.”

  The captain looked the medallion over intently. “Maybe Gonji can explain.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he can. I’m sure he’ll explain all he knows of monsters and magic when they roast him at the stake. And I intend to be there to see it.”

  “No, senor,” Salguero said softly, “I don’t think so.”

  Buey’s massive arm caught Cardenas up by the throat.

  “No—sacrilege!” Father Marquez fretted, pushing forward to aid Cardenas.

  “No-no, Padre, we won’t kill him,” Salguero assured. “Just render him hors de combat, Buey.”

  The Ox-man grinned and nodded as he dragged the uselessly struggling solicitor from the chamber. There came the short, sharp report of an impact from the antechamber. Then the sound of feet dragging across stone.

  Orozco scratched his neck and cast a wry glance at his superior, raising his eyebrows in quiet humor. But Salguero was distressed. He sat heavily on an iron-bound chest, brow furrowing.

  “That’s one more thing to worry about, Carlos. I wish I’d heard of this before the Jew went to see him. Maybe he could have—Jesus-Maria, I hope we’re on the right side of the lines.”

  Salguero gazed again with anxiety at the wygyll symbol.

  * * * *

  Deep in the night, Hernando Salguero, ex-captain of the First Catalonian Lancers, slipped through the quiet winding streets of Toledo’s highest ground. He passed through myriad gates and by sprawling manses erected in the old Moorish days, listening to the wash of the Tajo in the distance. As he neared the great towers of the Alcazar, he could make out below the Gothic spires of San Juan de los Reyes; and the stonework of El Transito, the converted synagogue. And nearby—the brooding square of Zocodover.

  The Burning Court. The Inquisition’s execution ground.

  Shuddering in the humid pre-dawn chill, he mopped his brow and hurried on toward the rendezvous point, where he would be conducted to fresh lodgings. This, lasting but a few days, when he would move on again, for only by such caution could he maintain his anonymity.

  He reached the narrow lane to which he’d been directed, tarried at the first gate long enough to kneel and clean a clogged boot heel. The signal thus given, he ambled to the next gate.

  A figure appeared in the gate arch. Not the one he’d been expecting. A pistolero. The angry eye of a wheel-lock’s muzzle was trained on Salguero.

  “In a hurry, Captain Salguero?”

  A small tuff of breath escaped the captain’s lips as he took a step backward. Another step—a rapier point jabbed into his lower back. Two more soldiers behind him, blades angled for a kill.

  “Your amigo was a gutless one,” the leader charged, gesturing with his wheel-lock.

  Salguero grimaced. His would-be conductor, an amiable scholar from the university, hung upside down from a bricked-in wall grating. By the light of the lowering moon, Salguero saw with revulsion how the dark blood dripped from the man’s head to spatter the thickening pool on the stones below.

  “Cowardly bastards,” the captain growled.

  “No, you—traitorous dog!”

  The leader stamped up to him and crashed the pistol barrel against his jaw.

  Salguero saw a blue-white flash, and then the world dissolved from view.

  * * * *

  It seemed to Salguero that a long time had passed when he again became conscious. He tried to orient himself in his surroundings. He was on his back, still lying in the lane, judging by the narrow patch of sky bordered by the meandering walls. He could not have been out long, for it was still dark. A shooting pain coursed through the left side of his face, where the swollen welt of the pistol blow seared his jawbone.

  Where were the ambushers?

  He pushed himself up on an elbow, his head spinning, to see the downed forms lumping the darkness of the lane.

  Jesus-Maria.

  “You are Captain Hernando Salguero?”

  The grating voice, guttural and inhuman, emanated from the shadows. He cast about in the darkness until his eyes adjusted. He sucked in a noisy breath when he caught the outline of the enormous form that hunkered in a corner of the gate arch. It was squatting, a cloak draped over it to touch the ground all around, the cowl drawn close with an unseen hand. By the width of the shoulders it was clear that, whoever he was, he would make Buey seem undergrown.

  The figure evoked a primal sense of terror in Salguero. It seemed to swell rhythmically, as if containing something within that might burst into an ill-prepared world.

  “Si,” the captain whispered. “And who…who are you? Did you do this?”

  “It was necessary to keep you whole until I could speak with you. You are the one who plots to free Gonji Sabatake from the dungeons of the Inquisition?”

  Salguero’s heart hammered wildly. Friend or foe of the samurai? No, it would make no sense for a foe to rescue the captain. Yet, he sensed a terrible savagery in this being, an awareness of a bitter struggle for control that was being waged even as they spoke. Violence was the substance of this stranger’s nature. Another deception fabricated by the powers of evil?

  No. It made n
o sense.

  “That is my plan,” Salguero admitted. “Have you an interest in this affair?”

  A gruff laugh came in response. “An interest?” the voice growled. “Si—and a need. Prepare yourself. Don’t scream.”

  Salguero’s stomach churned. The figure moved out of the shadows. The hood fell back, and the apparition Salguero saw nearly caused him to loose his bowels. He knew now the instant so many comrades had shrieked in recognition of on the battlefield.

  The certainty of the moment of death.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The brutish new warden of the day shift, Sergeant Padilla, quickly established his loathing for Gonji.

  He cut the samurai’s daily water ration such that his dogged efforts at cleanliness were severely curtailed again. The first time they came to grips in their battle of wills, Padilla surrendered in frustration, sending Gonji to a session under the lash. And each time a clergyman or political official was scheduled to come to the dungeons to ogle the controversial prisoner, Gonji was again treated to a brief ordeal on the rack or with the flagellum so as to “knock some of the vinegar out of him,” as Padilla was inclined to put it.

  As the summer dragged itself out, an increasing number of hostile dignitaries came to stare or level their unanswered accusations. Only later would Gonji learn the identities of some, and only out of Padilla’s boorish efforts at intimidating him. For he cared not a whit that the holy man with the pinched nose and haughty brow was the Papal Nuncio; or that the arrogant and insulting Duke of Lerma, who stormed away after Gonji matched the man’s pomposity with his own silent scorn, was the chief power behind the Inquisition itself.

  It wasn’t until Duke Alonzo Cervera surprisingly appeared in the dungeons one day that Gonji showed interest in speaking with one of his august visitors. Ironically, Cervera was disinclined to speak with him.

  When Gonji saw the man, who was the object of his most recent quest, peering through the grating with evident pain, the samurai’s eyes widened. Abandoning his laconic stoicism for the moment, he rose and went to the aperture, unsure of the words he would speak. For here was his former beloved master, father of the murdered woman who had carried Gonji’s unborn child, who had been set against him by the vicious acts of a malevolent being who was very much responsible for Gonji’s being cast in his present cold light of condemnation.

  It was to clear the air between them that the samurai had undertaken this deadly journey back to Spain.

  “Milord,” Gonji intoned reverently, bowing. “Cervera-sama—”

  “Don’t,” the duke replied, lines of anguish etching his countenance. “I don’t know why I came here. It was a mistake.” He turned to go.

  “Dozo—please, milord. It was not a mistake. You must hear me out. It’s because I sought you that I came to be in this living hell.”

  “As well you deserve,” Cervera replied over his quaking shoulder. “Go back to your pit.”

  “Iye! It was not me who destroyed Theresa! It was that thing that corrupted my duty, that deceived me. The monster did the deed, laid the trail of horror you followed. By all that’s holy, do you think I would destroy my own child and the woman who loved me?!”

  Cervera began to sob. “I—I don’t know what you’re capable of. You don’t think as we do. You never did.”

  The duke rushed away down the corridor, his disappearance like the abrupt reversal of a near victory.

  “By Iasu himself,” Gonji shouted after him, “I swear to you that I’m innocent of those crimes! You must believe me!”

  “Shut up, you slant-eyed devil!” Padilla bellowed, raking the grating with a poniard. “Get back in there with the rats and lice.”

  Gonji sat on his mat, teeth grinding in bitterness. He heard the soft call of Valentina, a note of tenderness in her voice that seemed out of place.

  “Gonji-chan?”

  “Leave me alone, Valentina,” he said, trembling with volcanic emotion. “Just leave me be.”

  * * * *

  Father de la Cenza was deeply disturbed by the tenor of the recent debates of the interminable council deciding the fate of the increasingly infamous samurai prisoner. He visited the dungeons with the intention of discussing certain pertinent matters, the first time he had gone to see Gonji in weeks.

  The samurai seemed unaccountably hostile, spurning him in that adamant fashion the prelate had come to know so well.

  Surrendering in frustration, de la Cenza was surprised to find the harlot across the corridor in an unusually agreeable mood. He received her confession, though he was forced to withhold absolution until she would admit to the witchcraft she’d been accused of. Nor could she be granted communion. This news she received somberly, withdrawing into her cell without her normal exhibition of rancor.

  As he moved away, he was treated to a second surprise: Gonji called him back, quite an uncharacteristic display of changed heart for this strange warrior.

  De la Cenza greeted and blessed him.

  “Why is it,” the samurai asked with a wry frown, “that out of all the clergymen who come to gawk at me, you’re the only one who ever confers his blessing?”

  “Well, they feel it’s a useless gesture, I suppose.”

  “So it is,” Gonji agreed perversely. Then, more sincerely: “But yours conveys a certain warmth. I don’t mind it at all.”

  “Gracias. I’m sure God will be relieved to hear that.” The priest’s eyes smiled a moment. Then he waxed serious. “You’ve become quite a thorn to them. They don’t know what to do about you. Do you know, they’re appealing to the Pope himself for guidance as to your disposition? The new Innocent—he’s not at all like the one who authorized torture in the interest of obtaining confessions of guilt. No, not from what we can gather. Nor is he much like his immediate predecessor. That’s a very sore point with Holy Mother Church right now, Gonji-san. Very bad things are whispered about the last Holy Father, whose tenure was short-lived.” He found his mouth going dry as he discussed the sensitive subject. “There’s been a climate of extreme oppression, a great upheaval both religiously and politically, since the time of that last Pontiff’s election. It’s rumored among the hierarchy that there’s a movement afoot to eradicate all record of his tenure and work. To treat him as if he never existed! That’s unprecedented, you realize. And it’s of more interest to you than you might imagine. They may never have told you, but you, and the movement you’ve generated in Europe, and this being called Simon, are all the subject of a specific papal bull issued by the late Holy Father! And if his work is abolished, you can understand the possible interest to you.”

  Gonji listened with keen interest as de la Cenza continued:

  “You—and your work—seem to have evoked much consternation in high places. You have both supporters and detractors in lofty positions, in more than one country. Very lofty, I suppose one could say, considering that both the vicar and the reigning monarch of Spain have been consulted about your prosecution. It would, I think, be in your best interests if you would address certain issues more candidly than you’ve shown a willingness to in the past.”

  Gonji seemed to mull this over. When he spoke, he did so reticently. “Such as, Martin-san?”

  “What exactly do you know of this Wunderknechten movement?”

  “The Knights of Wonder?” Gonji seemed smugly amused. “I can’t believe this thing is of such concern. I don’t even know who started it. It seems it’s a sort of universal tolerance movement. It doesn’t surprise me that you oppose it, in your stiff-necked insistence that you’re threatened by those who refuse to accept your heel. As for my part in it, I can only guess. I’ve fought in many parts of Yoroppa…taught precepts of what I myself was taught, to men under my command…to our camp-followers.” He shrugged. “Some of them…may have borrowed principles of the warrior code of bushido… of the S
hinto religion of my youth.”

  “Shinto?” de la Cenza queried.

  “Surely the Jesuits must have conveyed something of its substance back to Europe. Though it is rather difficult to explain on your terms.”

  And Father Martin listened as Gonji attempted to do so, recognizing the dangers in its obscurities, its devotion to ancestors over God, or so it seemed, though the Oriental was vague or evasive in this regard. Troubled by it all, the prelate began to realize that Gonji enjoyed the juggling of their apparently irreconcilable theological differences, finding no contradiction in nodding to the merits of each in turn. Despite the rigidity of his bushido code of ethics, the man’s cosmic view seemed an insoluble maze that he was nonetheless comfortable with.

  Father Martin abandoned the subject for a more unsettling one.

  “What do you know of the donado Anton Balaerik? What crossing have you had with him?”

  But the samurai seemed genuinely ignorant of the sinister monk and his order, though de la Cenza was sure Balaerik had been to the dungeons more than once. Further, it had been Balaerik who had ordered the samurai’s full-moon exposures on the battlements above the prison fortress.

  What was the source of the mysterious donado’s single-minded fanaticism?

  The prelate described Balaerik, and Gonji seemed to flash a look of recognition, but he had nothing more to say on the subject. Father Martin told Gonji his fear, voicing it for the first time to anyone apart from his God.

  “Something deeply troubles me about Balaerik, Gonji-san. He said something in council one day. Something about our divine right to settle our theological differences without pagan interference. No one else seemed disturbed by his words, but it suddenly struck me that he might have said ‘our right to slaughter each other in the name of Christ.’ And then you said something similar the first time I came down to you here. So you can see how the two of you are inseparably linked in my mind.