Count Scar - SA (21 page)

"A risk I am willing to bear for the good of the True Church," I said serenely. This was something I had learned from the men who had served under me. It is impossible to yell at someone properly
if they meerly accept whatever you say—and it is an intensely irritating experience for the person trying to do the yelling. "The Church, even the Inquisition, needs to show its merciful face to
the faithful, even while it is salutory that at least a few captured heretics escape to the hills to warn their benighted brethren what horrible punishments await them if they do not repent. And you
could certainly not expect me to take heretics back to Peyrefixade, once the Perfected's own castle! Then there really might have been doubts about my orthodoxy."

And Peyrefixade might be harboring a heretic priest, I thought, but I wasn't going to mention this.

"Then if you want a 'full understanding,' " growled the bishop, "you and I shall have one."

"There is nothing that would please me better, Reverend Father."

It turned out, as I expected, that the archbishop and my cousin the countess had never had a formal agreement on the disposition of heretics in the county, although her grandfather had. While
Archbishop Amalric did not actually say so, I had the impression that during her short rule the Inquisition had burned heretics itself, having her seal the orders eventually if someone remembered,
just as the village mayors had started carrying out capital sentences with only perfunctory reference to the authority of Peyrefixade. I wondered briefly if there had been an increase in the number
of burnings while the countess ruled there, and if the heretics had held her responsible and thus been involved in her death.

The bishop produced from a box by his hand the agreement sealed years before by the late Count Bernhard and a former archbishop of Haulbe, at the same time as the count took over at Peyrefixade.

I looked it over, thankful as I had rarely been that my own tutor had been so assiduous in teaching my brother and me the language of antiquity. Burning was most definitely not set out
specifically. Rather, the wording stated that the archbishop and the priests of the Inquisition would release heretics to me, once a council had examined their beliefs and given them a chance to
repent if found to be in error. It would be entirely at my discretion what happened to them next, although the word "mercy" appeared several times.

"If your chancellor could produce a new charter on these specifications," I said with an ingratiating smile, "I would be happy to seal it, and observe it to the letter, just as I trust the Church will."

The archbishop glanced toward me suspiciously from under heavy eyebrows and scanned the parchment quickly himself, as though wondering if there was something in it that had escaped his
attention. But then he nodded and reached again into his box. "As it happens, Count, I have already had such a charter drawn up."

The duke and several of his and the archbishop's attendants were called in as witnesses. The archbishop's chancellor read the agreement out, then both Amalric and I signed, using our monograms,
and attached our seals. The archbishop had a signet he carried in a pouch, with both a seal for the front side of the blob of hot wax he hung from the bottom of the charter—a lozenge bearing a
miniature portrait of a bishop, with the words Amalricus archiepiscopus around the edge—and a counterseal, a stag, for the back. I thought uncharitably that Amalric's portrait on his seal made
him look like a large-nosed frog.

All I had for a signet was the ring the emperor had given me when I left his service, silver carved with the imperial crown, which I sought to apply to the wax as nonchalantly as though I sealed
documents with it every day. The chancellor added the names of the witnesses to the bottom, below our monograms, and Duke Argave sealed as well. One more thing Peyrefixade needed, I
thought, watching the duke return his signet to its pouch, was a seal for its new count.

"We shall hold a general council this summer," the archbishop told the duke and me. "Efforts against the heretics have become, shall I say, somewhat uncoordinated of late." He gave a mirthless
smile. "The Inquisition may be under the command of the Apostolic Curia, but they need reminding that I am still the chief spiritual authority in my archdiocese. I shall summon all my
metropolitan bishops and the secular lords of the archdiocese, which includes you two, the other counts and castellans of the region, and Prince Alfonso."

I frowned to cover my surprise. "I had not known Prince Alfonso's territory was within your archdiocese, Your Reverence."

"Nabarra is indeed under my spiritual guidance," said the bishop, and for a second an expression almost like a smile flitted across his stern features, the first sign of humor I had seen in him.

"Alfonso is, if possible, even more stiff-necked than you are, Count. And despite his considerable efforts the heretics are becoming denser and more restless in his principality. Especially since the
rumors started…"

"Rumors?" I asked, since he seemed to be hoping for a reaction.

"Have you not heard them? They have been reported to me by several members of the Inquisition." His voice dropped, and his eyes gleamed fiercely. "The Perfected are said to be searching for
something powerful, something they lost a long time ago, something they believe that at last they may be close to finding again."

"Do you mean to say, Amalric," said Duke Argave, not even bothering with the bishop's honorific, "that they've found—"

The bishop shook his snowy mane. "Not that. That was only an old superstition anyway. The damnable Perfected could never have obtained the Grail. In the Paschal season it is error even to
think such sacrilegious thoughts. But we need to attack them more vigorously as their activity becomes more threatening. I know our predecessors thought it made sense to leave them that little
strip of land as part of the conditions of peace, after the horrors of war, but we might now reconsider. Two inquisitors in the past year have disappeared into the mountains of Nabarra and not been
seen again."

Argave ducked his head, leaving me wondering what powerful object the Perfected could be seeking. Could all this possibly have anything to do with the telesma found buried in the wall at
Peyrefixade, the conviare Father Melchior now carried in a leaden casket bound with magic seals?

After dinner that evening, I retired early to my chamber, feeling too sour to watch dancing in which I could not participate. Arsendis, I felt quite sure as I listened to distant snatches of music,
was happily doing graceful figures with her middle-aged lord, or some other galant who had caught her fancy.

I slept and woke, dozed and slept and woke again. As I tossed back and forth, trying to ignore the pain in my foot and the headache building behind my eyes, there came a soft tap at the chamber
door. I went still, waiting. The tap came again, and then the voice of the knight whom I had posted to guard me. "Are you awake, sir?"

I hobbled across the room to unlock the door. My knight and one of Argave's liveried servants, holding a candle, stood outside.

"I am very sorry to disturb you, sir," said the servant, "but there is a person here to see you."

"A person?"

"Whoever it is won't come in but is standing out in the street—saying only that it is very important."

Could it be Melchior? I wondered. But I could think of no reason why the priest would not come in. Or the man who had sent the assassin, back for another try?

I'd be ready for him this time, I thought, hopping as I pulled on my clothes. Ankle or not, I almost hoped it was another attempt on my life. A good fight would take the sour taste of humiliation
from my mouth.

The night was well advanced, and the flambeaux in the courtyard had been extinguished. The music was over, and the windows into the duke's great hall were dark. My own knights and
members of Argave's guard strode at my back and shoulders, our feet loud on the marble, as I crossed toward the gates.

In the guardhouse I insisted on having my sword back again before ordering the gates opened. Outside, as the servant had said, someone waited, someone well wrapped up in a cloak.

Sword in hand, I came through the gates slowly, forcing myself to put weight on my left foot so as not to advertise my weakness. The person turned at my step, someone smaller inside the cloak
than I had looked for.

Unexpectedly, I heard a woman's voice. "Good, Count Caloran, I am delighted you were willing to come out. You will understand that I do not feel it appropriate now to enter the duke's court
myself. But I have a message for you."

"A message?" I said stupidly, my heart still pounding from anticipation of a fight.

The woman's voice was strangely familiar. She came a step toward me, into the light of the guards torches. "This message," she said, with a glance past my shoulder to the guards, "is for your
ears alone."

And then I knew her: the woman at whose house the search for the assassin had ended, the woman who had once been the duke's mistress.

1

1

"Well, Melchior, my son," said Prior Belthesar as soon as the doors to his private parlor had been sealed, "let us all see what you have brought us."

I unwrapped the leaden casket, set it on the table, then stepped back and spoke the words to dissolve the binding spells. At the prior's nod, the treasurer stepped forward with an ornate knife and
pried off the physical seals of lead I had also set upon the little box. Aside from him, myself, and Prior Belthesar, only the cellarer, the other chief officer of the priory, was in the room.

When I had arrived late the previous evening and told the prior what I had brought, he had decided that an examination of the items by the chief officers of the house should be performed right
after the office of prime the following morning. I could feel my hands trembling slightly under the eyes of these senior masters of my Order as I opened the little box. They crowded round, peering
down at the two objects I laid on the table. One was the small tile telesma that had come out of the hearth, the other was the conviare.

"Perfected work, no doubt of it," declared the treasurer after peering at them through a lens. We all crossed ourselves. Prior Belthesar took up the telesma and closed his eyes while he ran his
fingers over it, feeling below its smooth glazed surface with his second touch—a skill in which he excelled. He opened his eyes after a minute and set the tile down. "You were right, my son, this
object is quite depleted. But powerful magic was laid into it by whoever made it!" Glancing at each of us with a small smile, he added, "I would not care to say this in front of the novices, but
some of those Perfected Magians in the old days, especially the high ones they called Maguses, were skilled beyond anyone in our Order today, save, of course, for our revered Master."

"Hmm." The treasurer had taken the objects to the window to look at them again through his lens under better light, then ran his own fingers over them. "This tile is not an old telesma, Prior.

The lines of magic in it were not laid down many years ago, perhaps not even many months ago. Moreover, these symbols were drawn on the clay by someone schooled in the modern bookhand, not
the writing of fifty years ago. The conviare, on the other hand, looks like it could certainly have been the work of one of those great old heretic maguses. Its magic lines and knots are deep with
time, and its visible design is not at all modern."

"The tile's not old, you say?" Prior Belthesar's face normally held the hint of a suppressed smile no matter what he was doing, but that was not the case now. "That means that even today,
suppressed, hunted, and harried though they be, the Perfected yet number some highly skilled Magians among their ranks."

"Tell us in full about the attack upon your count using the telesma of fire, Brother Melchior," the cellarer demanded. They listened to my account without interrupting, but I saw the cellarer's
eyes grow narrow when I described how I had extinguished the vortex of flame. "Just how did you happen to have a telesma of your own about your person, Brother Melchior?" he inquired as soon
as I had ceased to speak. "Particularly one good against fire?"

"The Order was well aware Brother Melchior possessed this object at the time he was sent to take up his station at Peyrefixade," Prior Belthesar told him smoothly before I could formulate any
answer of my own. "It was believed on good authority by Abbot Caspar himself that the castle might harbor interesting and potentially dangerous magical objects, so it was felt appropriate that
Brother Melchior be equipped to deal with various contingencies. Would you take out your own telesma and show it to the cellarer now, my son?"

Trying not to appear nervous, I drew the old ivory rod forth from its place near my heart and laid it on the table. The cellarer and the treasurer bent close. "As you can see, brothers, it is a telesma
of extinguishment," Prior Belthesar continued after touching it briefly, managing to convey the entirely false impression that he'd seen it many times before. "It is carved in the form of the water
carrier to symbolize its function, which is to quench. That includes putting out fires, certainly, but it is also good against pain, thirst, or even hunger. Properly used, it can also nullify magic
projected either by a person or another telesma. That is what happened in this case, I am certain. This telesma extinguished not only the physical flames about the count's bed, it also quenched the
current of magic between the tile in the hearth and the conviare suspended around the count's neck. That is why the vortex was dissipated so abruptly and effectively."