It was odd, Erde thought, the lassitude that came over her when she was left alone in the alcove, enclosed by its thick draperies and its strange furniture, as softly cushioned as a feather bed. The cool air smelled faintly of perfume, and the light was dim and golden, like a dying fire but as miraculously steady as the sun’s own light. This, she supposed, was Master Djawara’s “electricity”, which she had not yet seen close up. The lanterns that made it were tall and thin, like brass bells turned upside down on the top of pike poles, and did not flicker. For the first time since arriving in this world of 2013, she was not hot and sweaty, she was not uncomfortable or dirty, and she was not hungry. She thought perhaps she should be a bit more nervous than she was about being left on her own in a strange house, but the rich food and the sudden comfort were making her irresistibly drowsy.
—Dragon, I need to sleep a little. Will you watch over me and wake me up within the hour?
—I will, as best I can from such a distance.
—Not so far, really, and they will find a place here for you soon.
—I am eager for that.
—As am I, dear Dragon.
Erde settled herself into the deepest cushions, in the farthest corner. Perhaps if someone looked in here, they wouldn’t even notice her. Her last thought, swimming up through the layers of drowse just as she fell asleep, was: I hope I don’t dream.
But of course she did.
* * *
She thought she woke in darkness, but then the darkness showed a dim light through a crack across from her bed. A lantern in the outer room, she decided sleepily.
—For shame, Dragon! You’ve let me sleep far too long.
She yawned and stretched, awaiting his reply, his expected excuses about how badly she needed her sleep. But the dragon’s answer did not come. Then she realized that, stretching, she could not feel her body. She tried to sit up and had no awareness of limbs. No sensation at all except a creeping dread. She was not awake. She was dreaming, and the air in the room was damp and chill, and full of the snap and groan of wind among tent ropes.
She watched the lighted crack, her only anchor in the blackness, and understood she was looking through a slit between lowered tent flaps. Outside, the light dipped and flared in the breeze. Torches, then. One at least. And no other sound but the wind.
Suddenly, as if she’d arrived in this dream just at its moment of crisis, she heard the soft thud of running feet, feet trying not to make noise, encumbered by the weight and rattle of weapons and armor.
She heard a frightened voice cry, “Halt!” and heard it just as quickly hushed, followed by a hurried conference, low and urgent.
The tent flap was snatched aside.
“My lord!” A half-dressed squire, painfully young, stood in the opening. “My lord baron! Are you awake?”
“What? Yes!” growled a voice so close to Erde’s side that the shock alone nearly woke her up, a voice shaking off sleep like a dog shakes off water. “Yes, fool, I’m awake. What is it?”
The boy hissed to the man behind him, then took a torch from him and stepped aside. A tall and burly soldier stooped into the tent and went down on one knee. The torch at the opening lit his mud-spattered face and heaving chest, and the grim rage in his eyes.
“Wender. What . . . ?” The man on the cot came up warily on one arm. The edge of the torchlight touched the rough gold of his beard, and Erde could confirm what she already anticipated: Adolphus of Köthen.
“My lord, they’ve taken the Prince.”
“What? We had men guarding his tent.”
“Dead.”
Köthen sat up, swinging his legs to the ground. “All?”
“Throats cut, all three of ’em, with the Prince’s own dagger, my lord, conveniently left behind.”
“What of the priest’s men?”
“A showy mess of surface wounds, but all likely to recover, probably by morning if circumstance doesn’t intervene. I’m tempted to let it. Each claims to have seen the Prince fighting ‘like ten thousand demons.’”
“Ah, Carl, poor lad.” Köthen ran angry hands through his sleep-matted hair. “Is there a trail?”
“Two, my lord. The one we’re supposed to find, and then the other. I sent six of our best to follow the second, and came to fetch you.”
“All this without arousing notice?”
Wender smiled, and Erde pitied the man who got on his wrong side. “Aye, my lord.”
“Pray they find him. Pray six will be enough. Have you horses ready?”
“In the copse.”
“Tell that silly boy to douse the torch before he announces us to the entire camp. His little fire should be enough to keep the dark away.” Köthen heaved himself out of bed. “Help me dress.”
Before the torch could be extinguished, Köthen walked into its flickering light. He was naked. Erde tried to look away, but the dream-state did not allow her the luxury of modesty, and in the slowness of dreams where a few seconds can seem an eternity, she found herself made breathless at the sight of him. She’d never seen a grown man naked. She thought men were probably ugly without their fashionably form-altering clothes. Even Rainer, that fine figure of a young man she’d convinced herself she was in love with, even in her most romantic fantasies she’d always pictured him fully dressed.
But this man was beautiful, naked or clothed. She could not help but notice his efficient grace, or how the muscles moved under his skin as he bent to snatch up his clothing, or how the failing torchlight glimmered gold on the hair of his arms and chest and thighs. The intimacy of the moment shamed her. Surely Baron Köthen would be appalled if he knew. But she could not look away. She thought she could look at him forever.
Then he moved out of the light and threw on his shirt and undertunic. Erde was released from her disturbing fascination and had a moment to consider the dire news about the Prince. She wondered where her father’s hand was in this latest plot.
Wender shook out Köthen’s mail and held it high for the baron to shrug into, easy enough as he was at least a head taller than Köthen and several stone heavier. “It seems this priest will make you King, my lord, whether you like it or not.”
Köthen laughed sourly. He slipped on his blue-and-yellow tabard, then bent to pull on his boots. “And when Otto and his mysterious champion are dead on the field, and I’ve rallied the people around me with the promise of victory and peace, how long do you think I will survive?”
Wender grunted. He turned away and came back with Köthen’s sword and dagger. Köthen took them wordlessly and buckled them on.
Outside the tent, the torch had been upended in the squire’s little campfire. The two men hesitated, straining through the high sighing of the wind to pick out other, man-made noises. The moon was bright. Köthen squinted at it suspiciously.
“Back to bed with you,” he murmured to his waiting squire. “Or at least pretend to be, as if I were still inside asleep as usual. Have you your weapon handy?”
The boy shivered and patted the long knife on his hip.
“Good lad. Protect yourself if the need arises.” Köthen nodded to Wender then, and followed him off into the night.
The horses were waiting with another dozen men in a copse of aspens out of hearing of the encampment. With the moon to light their way, they quickly picked up the trail of those who had gone ahead along the muddied road.
“He hopes they’ll mingle with the track of ordinary travelers,” noted Wender. “But only brigands and soldiers travel in a time of war.”
Köthen grinned. “Well, we know which of us are the soldiers. . . .”
Erde found herself galloping through the moonlit darkness as if she were a hawk on Köthen’s shoulder. She could almost forget she was dreaming, but for the rock and rise of Köthen’s body on his racing horse, in such sharp contrast to her own smooth surreal flight.
But cushioned as she was by the unreality of the dream, she could not shrug off the lurking dread. Köthen’s presence somehow held the dread at bay. She recalled how he had protected her from the priest in the barn at Erfurt, even though she was a stranger and the ally of his enemy. Being with him flushed her whole body with warmth and a sense of well-being. But she knew that this strange euphoria was but a thin tissue between her and the terrible things she sensed were about to happen, and could do nothing to prevent. The dread was real and could not be avoided forever.
They rode hard for a good while until Wender judged they might be closing on the men he’d sent ahead. The ground was half mud, half ice, and pocked with puddles frozen just enough to make a noise when horses’ hooves crashed through them. Where the trees folded over the road, straining out the moonlight, Wender slowed them to pick their way along more quietly, listening ahead. Soon Wender pulled up, his hand raised for a halt. Köthen rode up beside him.
“A light, my lord, though the trees off to the left.”
Köthen cocked his head. “No sounds of battle.”
“No. We’ll go in on foot, in case our men are yet waiting to engage.”
The baron nodded. He seemed to have no difficulty taking direction from an older and more experienced adviser. “Quickly, though, in case they’ve been taken unawares.”
The company dismounted silently and left two men behind with the horses. Köthen drew his sword. Several of the soldiers armed their crossbows. They left the roadside and crept into the trees, seeking the quietest path through the sodden leaves and matted underbrush, avoiding the brighter patches of snow and ice where a man’s footfall would sound as loudly as a shout.
Those ahead did not seem to be making any great effort at silence. They’d lit two torches already and soon a third flared to life. Erde could hear horses milling and snorting, and voices that were restrained but not muffled. Wender waved his company forward, signaling one man to Köthen’s right and taking up the left-hand guard himself.
They were well within range when a voice ahead sounded an alert and the torches were doused in an instant. But that single word of command told Wender what he needed to know. He signaled his men down, then whistled sharply, three ascending notes and one falling.
“That’s Hoch,” he whispered. “I’m sure of it.”
A whistled reply came back immediately, the same four notes in reverse order. Wender rose and moved on ahead.
They came down into a snow-swept clearing, broad enough for a circle of moonlight to make its way through the overhanging trees. Hoch’s men relit the torches while Hoch came forward to meet them. Erde saw in the man’s eyes the dread she’d been shoving aside. Köthen saw it, too.
“What is it, Hoch? What have you found?”
Hoch had a thin, intelligent, worried face. Erde thought he looked more like a guildsman than a soldier. He swallowed nervously but looked his baron in the eye. “The worst, my lord.”
“The Prince?”
Hoch dropped his glance, nodding.
“Dead? Already?”
“Dead, my lord. Within the hour.”
Köthen swore and looked away. Then he glared around at the waiting men as if searching out someone to blame for this outrage he’d been so sure he could prevent. His men stood their ground silently, their heads bowed, absorbing the heat of his rage and giving him back their trust. It moved Erde deeply that Köthen, even as he was at that moment, a dangerous and angry man swinging a naked blade so that it flashed in the torchlight, would never turn his rage on his men. Her father’s men would have retreated well out of range, as far as was possible with honor, in such a situation.
Prince Carl dead. Murdered, she supposed, and she had no doubt by whom. The mad priest’s plot was proceeding. Was it possible that he—and evil—would somehow win the day?
Finally Köthen took a breath, lowered his sword, and sheathed it abruptly. “Show me,” he growled.
Hoch offered a slight bow. He motioned to one of the torchbearers, and led the way.
The young Prince lay crumpled at the foot of a big tree. He was small for his age, having not inherited his father Otto’s height. His feet were bare and battered. Not at all the figure of a King or warrior, Erde mused. He’d been a studious boy, she recalled Hal mentioning. Her heart went out to him: a scholar, doomed by birth to be a pawn in the vicious games of men more powerful and ambitious than himself. He was dressed in the soft robes he would have worn for retiring to bed. Clearly, he had not been armed. One torn end of a long sleeve had been folded back to cover his face.
Erde searched for blood or wounds. There were none anywhere on his slim body, except on his torn and muddy feet. Then she noticed the rope disappearing beneath the covering sleeve. Hoch took the torch in his own hand and raised it in order to illuminate a stout overhanging branch of the tree. Another length of rope dangled there, its loose end hastily slashed.
Hoch cleared his throat. “We cut him down not five minutes before you came, my lord.”
The men in Wender’s party shifted and muttered.
Köthen stared up at the offending rope. “He will call it a suicide and discredit the whole of Otto’s line. Why? This Prince was not his enemy. Are there no depths to which this man will not sink?”
No, Erde wanted to shout at him. Not a one! I could have told you that! Hal tried to tell you in Erfurt, but you wouldn’t listen!
Köthen raised his voice to be heard around the clearing. “Let not a man of you believe that the Prince died by his own hand!”
Wender laid a feather-light hand of warning on his baron’s sleeve.
Köthen shrugged him off brusquely. “Yes, yes, Wender, I’ll be quiet. For now, at least. But later . . .” He knelt beside the body and briefly lifted the concealing sleeve. “Forgive me, my Prince. I tried to keep you safe as best I knew how.”
Wender waited, sucking his teeth, then said quietly, “We could undo the shame at least, my lord.”
Köthen gave his lieutenant a shocked look that slowly turned to bleak acceptance. He rose, flicking the sleeve back into place. “Do it,” he said, “then swear the men to secrecy.”
“Aye, my lord.”
Wender sent the men scurrying—to untie the rope from the tree, from the Prince’s neck, to burn the evidence and scatter the ashes, and finally to do the necessary violence to the corpse. Köthen moved away, out of the gathered circle of torches, away from the busy clot of men. He moved like a man in physical pain, sorry for the death of an innocent, Erde thought, but also deeply disturbed by the sacrilege of this pragmatic desecration. Köthen would go to confession and do his penitence, and still carry this guilt on his soul forever, even though he had allowed it for all the right reasons, to honor a monarch he himself was trying to usurp. Watching him brood, she ached for him. Her desire to reach out to him grew so intense that she could almost believe it was possible, by sheer force of longing, to walk out of her dream-state and into Köthen’s reality.
This was a new idea, and even as swept up as she was in dream-induced fantasizing, the fact that she was considering it seriously quite took her aback. Her intention shifted a bit more toward the rational with her sudden realization that she had information that might ease Köthen’s guilt: If what Hal and Rose had surmised about Rainer’s parentage was true, a rightful heir to the throne might still exist, that is, if Köthen and her father hadn’t already killed him off unknowingly. But she had heard Köthen’s brief reference to Otto’s “mysterious champion,” and was sure it could be none other. If Rainer lived, and if he was the true Prince, Köthen could forget all this needing to be regent in order to keep the country together. He could join Hal and establish Rainer as Otto’s heir, and this alliance would crush the offending priest like a bug. And then they could all run the country together. Erde thought it a grand and glorious vision, a future one could look forward to. It was nearly—minus Rainer—what Köthen himself had offered Hal at Erfurt. It was a perfect plan and would solve everything. The hell-priest would at last be defeated.
She was very aware of being without substance in her dream-state, but her other senses were fully intact. She could see and hear and smell. Perhaps she could simply speak to Köthen without leaving the dream at all . . . why had she not thought of this before? And what harm could it possibly do to try? She focused on him very hard and thought of speaking, as she did when she spoke with the dragons.
—My lord of Köthen. . . .
Her dream-voice was like the whisper of night wings. She could hear it . . . but could he?
A thrill shot through her when she saw his head lift slightly and his eyes sweep the darkness in front of him as if listening. She had never expected to make contact so easily and now she was almost tongue-tied. What should she say to him? How should she introduce herself, a person he hardly knew, his enemy? How explain to him what was happening? She recalled how long it had taken N’Doch to accept the joining of minds. Köthen, she suspected, considered himself a rationalist, a pious man but not much given to superstition. How could she put words into his head without him thinking he was losing his mind?
—My lord of Köthen . . .
It sounded so formal. Then she remembered what Hal had called him.
—Dolph . . .
His head jerked this time. His eyes widened. She watched a faint flush of fear race through him. She decided she would not introduce herself at all. It was not her identity that mattered, it was her message, and now she realized she must convey it quickly. Even in her disembodied state, she suddenly felt faint. Each effort to bridge the gap between Köthen and herself sucked energy out of her like water down a drain. It was a greater gap than she’d imagined. She had to tell him her message before she lost the strength to do it.
—Baron Köthen . . . Dolph . . . a Prince may live still . . . find Hal and ask him. . . .
Köthen shook his head hard, then pressed his temples with both hands and let out a strangled cough. “Hal?” he murmured.
A sentry’s whistle off to the left distracted him. Quickly, Wender joined him at the edge of the darkness, and Köthen was once again all business.
“Visitors, my lord.”
“Indeed. How convenient. Have you done what you must?”
“We have.”
“Prepare His Highness for transport, then, with the honor due his rank. And, Wender . . . don’t be too quick about it, eh?”
“Will he come himself, do you think?”
“He expects to find his Christmas goose still trussed and hanging.”
Wender grinned his flat, dark grin. His eyes flicked off through the trees toward the road, where the approach of men and horses was no longer a suspicion. “Sounds like he’s brought a whole regiment. And enough torches to light a town.”
“Or burn it. Better send some of the men into the woods to cover us, in case in his madness, he decides to murder us all and lay the blame for Carl’s death on me.”
“What head will he have left then to crown, my lord, having so long ago lost his own?”
Köthen’s laugh was a short bark. “Why, I suppose von Alte’s next in line, poor fool.”
Wender snorted and went off to prepare the body. Köthen drew his sword, set its point to the frozen ground, and leaned on it gently, awaiting the priest’s arrival.
Now Erde’s terror stirred in earnest. From the time her dreams of home began, she knew Fra Guill would enter them sooner or later. Even in his absence, his black aura pervaded them. Her dream-state connection with Adolphus of Köthen, her supposed enemy, was a mystery and a surprise, if now increasingly a pleasure. But from the day the hell-priest first presumed upon the hospitality of her father’s court, from when his thief’s eyes picked her out and followed her everywhere, when in the barn at Erfurt he had sniffed her out of hiding despite her disguise, she knew that her fate was entwined with Guillemo’s in some grim and awful way. In fact, if there was any way she could manage to wake up, now was the time to do it. But she was unable to wake herself from these dreams as she had learned to with ordinary nightmares. So she withdrew inward as best she could, and imagined concealing herself in Köthen’s shadow.
Even so, when the first of the white-robes appeared, pale ghosts moving between the black columnar ranks of trees, each with its own huge torch, she thought of the lost souls wandering in torment, the souls these white ghosts had put to the torch at Tubin and the other “witch-ridden” towns. And she wondered if it was possible to die of terror while dreaming. Only the thought of the dragon waiting for her a thousand years away gave her the strength and the reason to master her fear, the way the man beside her was mastering his loathing and outrage in order to gain control of himself, and the situation.
The priest’s forces fanned out as they entered the clearing, a long arc of hooded men in white, mounted on tall white horses. Köthen did not move from his casual pose, but his eyes took them in, counting. Erde counted twenty, and was relieved not to find her father among them. Apparently he was not included in this particular conspiracy. Did that imply that Josef von Alte was losing his usefulness to Brother Guillemo? Erde feared for her father’s life if he was.
A space left in the center of the ranks was filled at last by Fra Guill himself, unhooded but wearing a full soldier’s breastplate over his white monk’s robe. His tonsured hair was no longer the madman’s rat’s nest it had been when she’d seen him last, but his face had grown gaunt and sallow. His eyes receded so deeply into their hollows that they appeared as two shards of ice glimmering in wells of shadow.
He spurred his horse forward. “Abroad so late, Köthen? Or is it early?”
If Köthen noticed the lack of honorific in the priest’s greeting, he did not show it. Erde took this as a frightening sign of how far the tables of power had already turned. It occurred to her to worry for Köthen’s safety as well as her father’s.
“Late, Guillemo, much too late, in fact. But so are you, it seems.”
“The battle against Satan knows no clock. Late is early, is it not? And so, what finds you here?”
Köthen tossed a nod behind him. “A little business. What finds you here?”
“Our hardy pursuit of that Satan’s minion, Otto’s treacherous spawn, who’s made a bloody and murderous escape this night.”
Köthen leaned on his sword hilt a little more heavily and replied dryly, “He’d hardly have been trying to escape, Guillemo. He’s barefoot and in his bedclothes.”
The priest’s eyes narrowed until their light was virtually extinguished. “You have news of the villain?”
“I have news of the Prince, if that’s who you mean.”
Erde wondered if Köthen was hoping to make Guillemo beg. He was goading the priest, for some hidden reason or because he could not restrain his hostility completely. Either way, she wished he would stop. Was she the only soul in Christendom besides Hal Engle who understood how venomous Fra Guill really was? When she’d faced him last, in Erfurt, he’d seemed wily but entirely mad. Now he appeared to have regained possession of himself. Erde was unsure if this was better or worse.
“You’ve caught up with him?” Guillemo sat up ever so slightly to peer past Köthen toward the huddle of men on the far side of the clearing.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What’s the news, then?”
“Your heart’s desire, Guillemo. The Prince is dead.”
“Ah.” Instantly, the priest crossed himself and bowed his head. A moment later, twenty white-robes did likewise, sending a rustle of wool and rosaries through the damp, still air. “Did he confess his dread villainy and call on his Savior before being given his end?”
Köthen seemed to be working a bad taste out of his mouth. “I doubt he was given the chance. He was dead when we got here.”
The banked glimmer in Guillemo’s eyes flared up again. “Ah! Distraught, then, with the weight of his bloody deeds, as a ray of goodness pierced his heart and made him see his . . .”
The priest had an infinite supply of self-serving rhetoric, as Erde clearly recalled. But Köthen had had enough. “Carl was murdered, Guillemo. By brigands, one supposes, unless you have any better ideas.”
“Murdered? You’ve seen it . . . him . . . yourself?”
“You know me, Brother. I never take anyone’s word for anything.”
“I’ll go to him, then. To offer whatever poor words might be allowed to intercede for his tarnished soul.”
Köthen cocked his head, still leaning on his sword. “Be my guest.”
The white-robes remained in their long array as their leader rode across the clearing. The torches made way for him, and a man-at-arms leaped forward to hold his horse as he dismounted. As he moved into the crowd of soldiers, Köthen jerked his sword out of the ground and strode after him.
Wender met him just outside the circle of light, stooping to pick up Köthen’s hurried murmur.
“I don’t like it. He’s taken it too quietly.”
“Grace in the face of being outmaneuvered, my lord?”
“Not even a possibility. Stay by me.”
They found Guillemo on his knees beside the Prince’s corpse, peeling back the wrapping of cloaks and oilskins with his own too-eager hands. Hoch and Wender had artfully arranged the layers to allow exposure of the Prince’s wounds with a minimum of effort. Guillemo wished to see a little more. He yanked and burrowed until he was satisfied, and all Köthen could do was stand and watch. Erde wished he would move off a bit. She had little stomach for being forced to observe the poor mutilated body at such close range. But she did note how all evidence of Carl’s true cause of death had indeed been erased by Wender’s careful butchery.
Guillemo studied the wreckage carefully. He touched his finger to a ragged gash, then smoothed the blood between finger and thumb, sniffing at it cautiously.
Wender muttered at Köthen’s side, “More like a chirurgeon than a priest.”
Köthen watched and waited, and soon had his answer.
Guillemo sniffed his bloodied fingertips again, rubbed them together and sniffed again. Abruptly, he cried out and sprang to his feet.
“Water! Ho, water! Quickly, on peril of my soul!”
A man-at-arms grabbed a waterskin off the nearest horse and ran over, shoving it at the priest with both hands in frantic bewilderment.
“Pour it for me, fool! Quickly, on my hand! Or else we’ll both be damned!”
The nervous soldier drenched Guillemo’s hand, water spilling everywhere, even on the Prince’s body. The priest then raised that hand, dripping, and held it out from himself like it carried some treasure or disease. “A torch, now! Bring me a torch!”
A torch appeared, and Guillemo directed the man to angle it toward the ground so that the flame swelled and leaped upward, overfed with fuel. With slow ceremony, Guillemo passed his wet hand through the dancing flame, several times, back and forth, until the soldiers murmured and gasped and took a step or two backward, away from him.
A mere carnival trick, fumed Erde, yet see how it amazes and subdues even these hardened fighting men.
At last, Guillemo withdrew his hand from the flame and held it up to show how it remained unsinged and unscarred. “A virtuous man has no need to fear the purifying flame,” he remarked. Then he turned slowly toward Köthen. “But you, my lord baron . . . what unlawful devil’s ritual have you been enacting here?”
Köthen went entirely still. Erde could see he was suddenly and exquisitely aware of the trap that yawned before him, reeking of brimstone and the black smoke of the stake. If he told the truth, his earnest sacrilege would be for naught. Poor Carl would have only an excommunicant’s grave in unconsecrated ground. To deny the deed would mean lying to a priest, God’s representative on Earth, and there were a dozen men present who might not be so willing as he was. A moment later, Köthen relaxed. Either he’d found an opening, or he was simply brave enough to fake it.
“Since when is it unlawful to bring a King’s son home for burial?”
“You wish me to believe that you found him like this? With the devil’s own sign cut into his mortal flesh?”
“What? Where?”
Guillemo pointed. “There!”
No sane man, nor an honest one, would have traced out a pentacle among the crisscrossed wounds on the Prince’s chest.
“I don’t see . . .” began Köthen. He turned to Wender. “Do you see . . . ?”
“Of course he doesn’t, for foul magic has hidden it, from all but a wary and knowing eye!” Guillemo met Köthen’s furious stare for the length of a breath, the gleam in his own eyes already victorious. Then he rounded on the nearest man, the frightened one who’d brought him the waterskin. “You, my son, for the salvation of your immortal soul! You tell me what’s gone on here! What terrible unholiness has this godless man led you to commit?” Without looking, the priest raised his arm and pointed at Köthen.
“This is nonsense, Guillemo,” scoffed the baron, but Erde could see he knew it wasn’t. “We have more important tasks in front of us.”
The priest turned, his head high, shoulders flung back. His eyes seemed to have found their former life, and filled the hollows below his dark brows with flash and danger. “My lord of Köthen! What could be more important than a man’s immortal soul?”
Just lie to the man, Erde pleaded desperately. Had she been there in reality, she would have flung herself at Köthen whatever the peril, and begged him not to pursue this futile debate. Like his mentor Hal before him, he refused to believe that the craft inspired by lunacy could win out over the craft inspired by reason. But Erde was sure that he’d soon learn, as Hal had, how easily men are swayed by superstition and terror.
Wender had apparently reached the same conclusion. From the moment the debate was joined, he’d begun to ease himself backward through the cluster of men. Now he moved casually along the outside as if trying for a clearer view of the action, grasping certain elbows, prodding certain backs as he worked his way around the circle. He got concealed nods in return, and those men, four, six, seven of them, keeping the rest of the onlookers between them and the long line of white-robes across the clearing, backed off slightly and quietly readied their weapons. Their eyes strayed to Hoch, who would give the order. When Erde looked for Wender again, he was gone. Slipped off into the woods, she guessed, to alert the hidden reinforcements.
Meanwhile, Köthen was saying, “Nothing is more important, good Brother, unless it be the bringing of peace and order to the land, so that its people have time and security enough to tend properly to their spiritual well-being!”
Guillemo rolled his eyes and groaned as if hearing the worst sort of blasphemy. “Oh, dear Savior! Forgive the day your loyal servant agreed to an alliance with this unbeliever!”
“You go too far, priest! How dare you question my faith?”
“Who better to question it than a man of God?”
Köthen spread his hands and turned to the men around him, seeking a show of their support, a sign that they knew where Fra Guill’s posturing was leading and would have none of it. Erde felt a moment’s pity for him. Hal had said that men’s willingness to follow him was Köthen’s greatest strength. He’d risen to power on their loyalty and support. When he searched their faces now and saw loyalty ebbing away, as she did, he would know he had lost them, and losing them, had perhaps lost everything.
But would the realization be enough? Or would he keep flailing away at the priest’s apparently invincible juggernaut of unreason? She must tell him to forget reason, forget honor! Tell him he must back out of the trap while he still had a chance, for once closed, it would open again only as the flames rose up around him at the witches’ stake!
She could tell him. She was there, at his ear. . . .
—. . . Run, my lord baron! . . . you must save yourself! . . .
Köthen shook his head, a negating shudder.
—. . . Listen to me! You must flee! . . .
He brushed the air dismissively with his hand.
Guillemo gasped and pointed. “Ah! See! See how the Dark One speaks to him even now! But you cannot put off Satan so easily, can you, my lord baron, as if you were swatting a fly!” He lifted both arms and bellowed, “O, down on your knees, Adolphus of Köthen! Confess to the Lord your vile sins of trafficking! Throw yourself on His mercy, for it is infinite!”
Köthen was breathing in the tight, measured way of a man readying himself for desperate action. His gaze remained fixed on the priest, though Erde was sure he’d rather be scanning the dark woods for help and rescue.
—. . . Dolph, behind you! Your man is behind you! . . .
She had little strength left for this urgent speaking across centuries. She gathered herself for one last try.
—. . . Now, Dolph! Run! Or I swear, HE WILL BURN YOU! . . .
Guillemo froze, both arms still raised toward the cold night sky. “What?” he whispered.
And Erde learned that she had not lost all bodily sensation in her dream-state: She distinctly felt her blood run cold.
He took a step toward Köthen. “What do I hear?”
“You hear nothing!” Köthen snapped.
“Do not deny it!” Guillemo hissed. “She is here!”
This time Köthen did not have to feign bewilderment. “What ‘she’? There is no ‘she’ here.”
The priest edged another step closer, sniffing like a dog on a scent. His blazing eyes searching the air around Köthen’s head. He seemed to have forgotten the rapt audience he’d been playing to so fervently a moment before, but the sudden change in him only frightened his listeners more. Erde noticed to her horror that, deep in their hollows, his eyes were the same green-gold as the eyes of a snake.
“Is it possible,” he murmured to Köthen, “that you do not know?”
“Know what, priest?”
“The witch-girl. She speaks to you. It’s her voice you hear in the night sounds. . . .”
Köthen’s nostrils flared. “No. . . .”
“It is.” Guillemo moved closer, within a pace. “What does she say to you?” He slithered sideways, circling, his voice pitched low and far too earthy for a cleric. “You hear, witch? He minds you not. Come, speak to one who’s worthy of you!”
Erde shrank from him in panic, as his aura invaded her dream space.
—Wake! I must wake! Dragon, help me!
—He cannot, witch.
The hell-priest’s mouth had not moved. His voice was in her head.
—And you never shall wake. . . .
—I will! I will!
But there was smoke twined in his hair and tiny flames danced around his body, and his green-gold eyes pinned her like prey. He was the hell-priest and he was not. He was something more, something Other. He would swallow her, eat her alive, he would snuff her, smother her, he would . . .
—HELP ME!
She grabbed for Köthen and felt the hot shock of contact. He felt it, too, and moved at last, jerking himself aside as if to confront the one who’d touched his shoulder. But his hand by instinct stayed to his sword hilt, and Guillemo sprang back, bellowing.
“To me! Ho, to me, knights of God! We are under attack!”
The Other in Erde’s head lost hold. Her dream-self shot off like a stone from a catapult, careening away, away, toward blackest emptiness, toward the void. But just before the void, something caught and held her, something soft and strong and infinite. And a voice spoke to her, as light and as large as the stirring of air.
—He cannot help you, but I can. . . .
And then she was ever so gently repulsed from the edge of the darkness and sent back toward the light, drifting slowly. She could not propel herself back to the clearing. She hadn’t the strength. She could only float helplessly and watch from a distance as . . .
Hoch’s order rang out. Köthen’s head turned to the sound of horses behind him just before the charge of the white-robes drowned it out. He drew his sword and with infinite trust in his lieutenant, backed off in the direction of Wender’s approach. Hoch’s men were already halfway to their horses, preparing to meet the charge. A few of the remaining soldiers got hold of themselves and backed away with Köthen, leveling their own weapons at those who remained undecided.
Köthen yelled to the stragglers, “Come on, think, you fools! Since when does a madman speak for God? Come now, while you can! He’ll show you no more mercy than he’s shown me!”
The priest raced in among them, screeching hellfire. Most of them broke and ran, terrified. Hoch drew his horsemen up in a line between his baron and the priest, and the white-robes were almost upon them when Wender swooped down out of the woods with a big gray horse in tow and lifted Köthen bodily into its saddle.
“Two to one’s my count,” he shouted over the clash of steel and hooves and leather. “Do you wish to fight another day?”
“I do, indeed,” Köthen rasped, reining in his horse so that it danced and circled. “I’ve been fool enough for one night! Get the men out of here!”
Wender signaled Hoch to pull the men off and retreat.
“Wait!” Köthen yelled. “We must see to the Prince!”
Wender snatched at the gray horse’s bridle before Köthen could turn back. “Already seen to.” He pointed as two men raced past, one with Carl’s swaddled body slung over his horse’s shoulders. “Quick, my lord! He’ll have them after us!”
“Only for show. I’m more useful to him now as a living threat of witchcraft than a dead one!” Köthen urged his horse forward anyway. “Wender!”
“My lord baron?”
“Name your reward!”
They were moving away from her now, a dozen men low over their horses’ necks, ducking branches, fleeing through the dark woods faster than Erde, in her weakness, could follow.
“A speedy escape, my lord!” called Wender, “And after that, the hell-priest’s head.”
“That you’ll have to stand in line for. But I’ll use my influence, if I have any left!”
Their voices were fading. She wanted to go with them, to share in the euphoric bravado of the escape, to know that they were safe. But she only drifted. . . .
“But first we shall deliver this sad Prince to his father.”
Even this did not catch Wender by surprise. “Aye, my lord, we shall.”
And then she heard only the thudding of hooves as they faded beyond her hearing entirely, and beyond her consciousness.