Chapter 16

 

Niccolo reined his horse in at a watering trough in a cold village just south of Franz Bertoller’s mountain city. According to the maps he’d been following, he was close. His heart told him the same. Teresa wasn’t far. Mother to him, sister to him, muse and confidante to him, this one whom he loved was near.

If it hadn’t been for the disease that knocked him off his feet for weeks after her departure, he would have been here long ago. But the battle had been harder fought than anyone expected, and demonic voices plagued his dreams—taunting him with threats and visions of failure and death.

Never had he had such an experience. The sisters had tended him with all their skill and compassion, but it was thoughts of Teresa that pulled him through. An unaccountable conviction that she needed him.

He had always counted himself in debt to Teresa. Without her not only would his life have ended in the miserable plague of his childhood, but he should never have come into the Oneness; and not only would he never have known Oneness, but without her he would never have discovered his gifts, his remarkable art, the way he could help others, his place in the world.

He was not happy to find she had gone off without him, although it didn’t surprise him—she had always been headstrong and determined. She complained when he followed her example in that, but they both knew where he had learned it.

Dismounting, he stretched his legs while his horse watered itself. The village was small and dirty; a chill in the air did little to mitigate the smell of refuse mingling with smoke from hearthfires and the forge of a nearby blacksmith. Eyes fixed on him; loiterers and tradesmen stared. He tried to ignore them. He had a bad habit of getting drawn into the lives of people he encountered, and right now, he didn’t want to lose any more time finding Teresa. He shivered, not wanting to admit how much the cold and damp were affecting him. He’d thought he’d left the fever behind him, but eight days into his journey, it seemed to want to come back for a second bout. He was doing his best to deny its chances.

“Ho, stranger,” a gruff voice greeted him.

He looked up to see a man of middling height and middling girth, with a bushy beard and sharp eyes, standing only a few feet away. The man was looking him over carefully, but there was no real threat in his manner.

“I am just passing through,” Niccolo said. “My horse was thirsty, and I . . .”

“No need, no need,” the man said. “You’re welcome enough. I suspect you may be thirsty also, aye?”

Niccolo intended to say no, but the truth came out his mouth instead. “In truth, it has been some days since I had much else but spring water.”

“Then come in, and have a drink. I am the innkeeper here.”

“It’s good of you, but I fear I’m short on coin, and on time.”

“The coin is not necessary; twas I who offered the drink, not you who tried to take it. As for time, your horse could use an hour’s rest, and so from the looks of you could you. You can ride off again hastily if you please, but I wager you’ll soon be slowed by exhaustion. Come, boy, take my advice and rest a little while.”

Niccolo opened his mouth to protest, but the man’s good sense overcame his protests before he had time to form them. He found himself nodding instead, and tying his horse to the post.

“I thank you,” he said. “I think my journey must not be much longer, but I’m grateful for the respite nonetheless.”

The man led him into a small, crowded inn that was welcoming in its way. The air was thick with smoke and the smells of ale and of roots stewing in a meat broth; Niccolo’s mouth watered. He’d grown up on the wine and finer fare of the south countries, but after more than a week of eating mostly dried fruit and hard meat and bread, anything hot and hearty smelled wonderful. His host caught sight of his face and said, “The stew I cannot offer you on the house, but if you’ve a coin or two, there’s no reason you shouldn’t feast as hearty as any man of the village and farms hereabouts.”

“I might be able to manage that,” Niccolo confessed, settling down on a wooden bench at a table. The man had been right about his condition. He hated to admit it, but he was worn through.

“You say you have not much farther to go,” the innkeeper said, setting a tankard of ale before Niccolo. “Where be your destination?”

“The castle of Franz Bertoller,” Niccolo answered.

“Indeed?” the innkeeper asked, his bushy eyebrows shooting up. “Strange business thereabouts, these days! But I don’t know how a southerner such as you would have heard about it so quickly.”

“I haven’t heard,” Niccolo said. “I am going there for reasons of my own. Can you tell me what’s happening there?”

“Death was happening,” the innkeeper said, “a mighty plague that swept much of the country, though it left us pretty much alone. But then yesterday some began to come through the town what said a miracle had come—that the nearly dead rose from their beds and walked upon seeing the face of a painting.”

Niccolo shot to this feet in his excitement. He lowered himself again, aware that he’d spilled ale all over the table with his abrupt motion. The innkeeper didn’t seem to care. “Did they say anything about a woman?” Niccolo asked.

“Aye, the painting was of a woman. A servant girl, they say. Mighty strange, the whole story.”

“I don’t think that would be the one. More likely they would say she was a noblewoman—for she carries herself like one, though she is a humble sister of the Oneness.”

A darkness came over the man’s face, and he looked about him as though afraid of eavesdroppers. “The Oneness, you say? That’s a bad business in these parts, boy, a bad business indeed.”

Niccolo frowned. “What can you mean?”

“The lord of the castle is no friend to the Oneness,” the man said. “His father courted their favour, but the younger Bertoller had them all killed many years hence. His has been a foul lordship, but that deed was one of the foulest.”

Alarm rose in Niccolo’s heart as his mind raced back to his boyhood and the northern nobleman who had taken him from his parents on the road and brought him to the abbey and Teresa. He had never liked Franz Bertoller back then, but had always felt somewhat indebted to him, and he was too young to understand what Teresa really thought of him or why the sisters had asked the lord to withdraw his help and leave the abbey for good. He was sure that, whatever else might have been true, they had not viewed the man as an enemy—not a murderous one, in any case.

So they could not have known this part of his history.

“How many years hence did that happen?” Niccolo asked.

The innkeeper gave him a date, and Niccolo nodded—it had been some time before Franz Bertoller ever came to the abbey in the south countries. Apparently the lord had concealed much from the sisters.

“And the rumours you hear of the castle—they say nothing of a woman?”

“Not that I’ve heard, but those with stories to tell passed through quickly. They were sick, you see, and were healed, and all eager to get back home. As I said, the plague has largely left our folk be. Don’t know the reason for that, but I’m grateful.”

“You are under the Spirit’s protection,” Niccolo said. “May his grace rest on you.”

“I don’t know much about any of that,” the man said. “I do know our kind never took up much with the lord. He’s a crafty one, going in for intrigues and covenants and shadowy deals, and worse—the man deals with dark spirits, they say. Our folk are more honest than that. We pay taxes and let him alone, and he lets us alone in return.”

His errand suddenly feeling that much more urgent, Niccolo rose to go. His host pushed him back down with a hand on his shoulder. “There now. Ye still need to eat something or you’ll not get far. I don’t like to remark upon it, but ye look as though there’s a touch of the fever upon yourself. Will do you no good to starve your body besides.”

Niccolo submitted, again forced to concede the man was right. His mind whirred over what he had just learned but could come up with no other plan than to leave as soon as possible, rush to Teresa’s side, and rescue her from any threat. He had never been a man of craft, preferring to take the most direct course and stick passionately to it. It seemed to him that his benefactor was being obstinately slow about bringing his bowl of stew, but then, perhaps the man was trying to help him—make sure he actually took the rest he needed.

When the stew did come, Niccolo swallowed it too fast to taste it, scalding his tongue in the process.

“I thank you,” he said, laying a small stack of coins on the table. “For the food, the drink, and your goodwill. And indeed for the tales you’ve told me.”

“No trouble,” the man replied. “I wish you well on your errand. Take care of yourself, lad; it’s a cruel country you ride into.”

Before he began to feel sick again, Niccolo had made good time. He anticipated that Franz Bertoller’s city was only another day’s ride, and as he urged his horse through the mountainous terrain thick with pines, he cast his spirit forward and tried to sense the presence of Oneness—of Teresa, not far away now. No assurance of connection came to him beyond what he and Teresa always shared—a heightened sense of the unity that bound all the Oneness together. That he had always, like a second breath in his lungs.

As a boy, some among the Oneness had been puzzled by Niccolo because it seemed that he had never Joined—the moment of entrance that every member of the Oneness treasured and forever remembered had never happened to him. This worried some, but wise Mother Isabel saw past it to the reality that Niccolo was already One. “Called from the womb,” she had said. He did not know much about that. He only knew that Oneness was his whole life. Until the moment he met the sisters at the abbey, he had not understood who he was. But from that very moment, he had known himself to be forever home with them.

His failure to save them from the plague, so many years ago, still haunted him. He felt his gift for painting and creating wrestling in him, wanting out. But the very idea of loosing it brought back the crushing disappointment, the devastating helplessness of the day the plague was stronger and the sisters died.

The innkeeper’s words spurred him on now. Franz Bertoller an enemy of the Oneness. And Teresa in his house. Miracles of healing happening, through a painting, as in the old days—but could the darkness see that as anything but a declaration of war?

She needed him.

He ignored waves of mild fever and pushed his horse onward, upward, into the mountains.

As the day wore on and the sun began to sink, he could feel the weariness in his steed but could not bear the thought of stopping for the night. Dark clouds were gathering overhead—storm clouds, he realized. He might want to push on through the night, but nature was unlikely to let him.

Unhappily accepting that to press on through a storm would likely get him lost, he began to look for shelter for the night. He found it in a shallow cave in a wall of black rock, reachable by an incline covered with shale. Pines clustered thickly around the slope, but the way itself was clear. He led his horse up the incline and freed it of its saddle, tethering it to a scraggly pine tree that was growing at the far end of the cave mouth.

It grew blacker by the moment, and by the time he had settled down in the back of the cave, rain started to fall. Within minutes the rain had grown to a deluge, and streams began to pour over the cave mouth, trapping him behind a variegated wall of water. His own corner remained reasonably dry, and he wrapped himself in his coat and resigned himself to spending the night out here.

He did not expect the demon attack and had no warning but for the sword that formed in his hand, fully there all at once. His body responded as though one with the weapon, leaping: he thrust it forward into the darkness even as claws and eyes and a great toothy maw appeared through the falling water and bore down on him. His sword thrust found purchase in the beast’s shoulder—a bear, great and black, and animated by something far worse than any predator of the forest. It roared, Niccolo drove the sword harder, and he heard the shriek as demons rushed from the creature’s body—but not before the terrible jaws had clamped onto his shoulder.

He heard his own shouts even as he did his best to twist the sword in deeper, and his knees buckled as pain seared through his body from his shoulder. He was pulled forward as the bear drew back and shook him, pulling him out into the rain. His body slammed against the rock wall and then his hands and face were being skinned against the shale and the bear had released its bite.

He heard demons shrieking through the darkness and his horse crying out in terror.

Then nothing more.

* * *

“I found him,” Richard announced, standing as he shuffled files back into a neat stack. “It’s a sixteen-hour drive. Who’s coming?”

“I am,” said nearly everyone. April’s eyes filled with tears, and she uncurled herself slowly from the chair. “Thank you.”

“He’s our boy too,” Richard said.

“Can we leave right away?”

“Far as I know.”

“I need to go up to the cottage,” April said. “Just to get something.”

“Fine,” Chris said. “My truck’s there anyway, and we should take it. We’re going to need a few cars.”

April nodded dumbly, and not fifteen minutes later she was standing in the fishing cottage up on the cliff, rooting through her things for a sketchbook. She’d been drawing pictures for Nick, and she wanted to give them to him as soon as they found him.

She straightened when the phone rang.

Chris was outside starting the truck; she was the only one there.

It rang again.

And she knew—

She knew it was him.

“Hello?” she asked, her hands shaking.

“April?”

“Nick, thank God. Where are you?”

“I need you to come,” Nick said. His voice trembled.

“We’re coming, Nick. Where are you? Are you with your mom’s boyfriend—Tom?”

“No, I ran away. I hate him. I hate it there.”

“You ran away?” She forced her voice to stay calm. “Nick, where are you? We can’t come get you if we don’t know where you are.”

“I’m not sure. I’m at the shipyards. In Bywater.”

She closed her eyes. Bywater was only a few hours north of here—it was only by the Spirit’s grace that he had called exactly now, before they all hit the road and went too far to be any help.

“Where’s your mom?” April asked.

“I don’t know. Probably with him. I thought I could hitch a ride home, but they were gonna call the cops on me so I ran.”

Chris appeared in the kitchen doorway, a questioning look on his face. She waved for him to stay put and mouthed Nick’s name.

“Okay, listen, Nick, do you see anywhere safe where you can wait? A restaurant or an office or something?”

“They’ll call the cops on me.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” April said. “You can wait at the police station.”

His voice got stubborn. “I don’t want to. Just come get me.”

She thought better of arguing. Probably better for them all that they didn’t involve the police again anyway. “Okay. Fine. But you need to wait somewhere safe.”

“I’m safe. I’m where they build the ships. By the dock. There’s a phone there. That’s where I am.”

She had to marvel at his nerve. But then, she knew too well what was driving it. She could still feel the sense of his distress, and its echoes in her own memories.

Memories that would always be a part of who she was, no matter how much she didn’t want them to be.

Hanging up, she told Chris, “He’s in Bywater. At the shipyards. He ran away from Shelley and hitched a ride or something . . . don’t ask me.”

“That’s good,” Chris said. “He’s not far; we can get him tonight.”

“Yeah,” April said. “But I’m not going to be happy until we’ve actually got him, so let’s get going.”

Chris nodded. “I’ll call over and let everyone else know. You and me can just hit the road now. No reason to wait.”

April appreciated that more than she could say. She had barely had time to buckle up in the truck before Chris joined her and they were on their way.