The Gathering Storm (39 page)

Chaos erupted. People bolted for the doors, yelling, as a second tripod tipped over. Fire caught the hem of a man’s tunic.

The ground had stopped shaking, but another brick fell smack onto the head of a woman clawing her way past others. She fell and was jerked up by her terrified companion. A man slammed into Hanna and shoved her aside.

“Down!” shouted Hanna, dragging Margret down beside her, using the benches as shields, cowering under them. Vindicadus had vanished. A brick hit the wooden bench right above her head and shattered into two, one half falling on
each side. Dust coated her face. Screams deafened her. She saw a man tumble, crushed by the panicked crowd.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” cried Margret.

“Not that way!” It was hard to be heard with oily smoke filling her lungs when she sucked in air to speak. She kept her hand on Margret’s sleeve as she coughed. “There’s another way out past the Hearth!”

They clambered under and over tumbled benches, some standing miraculously upright, others pitched over on their sides, but when they reached the aisle, Margret fled toward the doors. Hanna stumbled through the acrid smoke and streaming dust to fetch up against the Hearth.

“Eagle!” A man’s voice. “This way!”

Her eyes wept tears, and she had to cover her nose and mouth with her sleeve in order to breathe. A firm hand propelled her forward. She tripped on rubble, went down hard on her bruised knee, and fell flat as a body slammed into her. Other hands plucked her to safety, and they stumbled out into open air. The alley was littered with debris and fallen masonry. They picked their way over mounds of bricks, slipping, staggering, hands scraped raw and clothing torn as they reached the spot where the alley opened onto the avenue. There they huddled together, a forlorn group of eight wretched, terrified souls.

Clouds of dust blotted out the twilight sky and the first stars and billowed like fog down the street. Smoke poured skyward as fires took heart from the confusion to run wild. Everywhere men and woman stampeded along the streets without purpose, running, shouting, many seeking a gate out of the city. It was hard to tell anything with dust choking their view.

“Oh, God! Look!”

Hanna’s neck hurt, but with a grunt of pain she turned. Wind had blown a gap in the dust.

The domed temple dedicated to St. Marcus the Warrior had caved in. Dust rose in clouds, drifting lazily into the sky. Moans and screams from folk trapped within the mound of rubble made a horrible chorus. A distant horn blew. Drums beat from the palace; the upper city was visible in snatches through dust and smoke. The sun bled a deep red as its rim
dropped below the horizon. It looked as if the heavens, too, were burning.

Brother Fortunatus stood beside her, weeping tears of fright, or compassion, or pain.

“What did you mean,” she asked suddenly, “when you preached the parable of the child buried beneath a landslide?”

His face was streaked with dust and a smear of blood, and his eyes seemed startlingly white in contrast, like those of a spooked horse. “Are you Presbyter Hugh’s spy?”

“I am a King’s Eagle, Brother. But on my journey south to Aosta, I met one of my fellow Eagles, a woman called Hathui—”

He sank to his knees. Around him, his companions exclaimed while drums resounded and horns rang. Distantly she heard a troop of horse pounding along an unseen street. No one regarded them. A brick fell from the wall of St. Asella’s, shattering where it hit the ground not a body’s length from them.

“We are desperate, Eagle.” Fortunatus clasped her hands as though he were a supplicant and she the regnant. “Sister Rosvita has been imprisoned in the dungeon of the skopos for over two years. I pray you, help us rescue her.”

“How can it be that the king has allowed this to happen? She is his most trusted counselor. Did she turn against him?”

“Never! That night we heard only Hathui’s frightened testimony. She told us that the queen and the presbyter had conspired to control the king with sorcery, with a daimone. Sister Rosvita went away with the Eagle to seek Margrave Villam and the king. She must have seen the truth. Why else would they have imprisoned her?”

“Why not kill her, then?”

“I have often wondered, but I think—”

“Look!” cried Sister Heriburg.

Cavalry advanced down the crowded avenue like ghosts advancing through fog. The soldiers pressed forward through the panicked mob, who threw bricks and screamed abuse at them.

“There will never be a better time,” said Hanna, scanning the chaos. “They’ll need every guard in the city to restore order, to dig out the injured, to protect the king and queen and
the Holy Mother herself. If we go now, perhaps we can save her. Who is with me?”

“I am with you!” cried Fortunatus, rising to his feet. “Nor need I vouch for my companions.” He gestured to the rest of their party.

“I am with you!”

“And I!”

“I will never desert Sister Rosvita!”

“God bless you, Eagle.” Aurea wiped blood from her cheek with her scarf as she wept.

They all cried out, these soft, educated, nobly-born clerics. How much hardship had they ever faced, three girls freshly come from the convent? The two young men looked no more worldly. Only Fortunatus and Aurea seemed constructed of sterner stuff, less likely to shatter if a cataclysm wrenched them. But they had all endured in Darre for two years, fiercely protective of their imprisoned mentor.

Hanna admired their loyalty.

She could not believe that Sister Rosvita would ever turn against the king, just as she herself would never turn against the king. But if the king were no longer in control of himself, then she must do what she could to fight those who had made him a captive in his own body.

“We must hurry, while they’re still in confusion. Where does this alley lead if we go the other way? Can we get to the palace by back streets? We’ll need lamps.”

Fortunatus braved the church and returned with three miraculously unbroken lamps and a jar of oil. They made their way back toward the palace, keeping off the main avenues where they were most likely to meet soldiers. The destruction, although extensive, wasn’t as bad as that terrible collapse of the dome of St. Marcus. Yet they still had to pick their way over waves of rubble. They still heard the screams of the trapped, the crushed, and those who feared a loved one might have perished. Dust made them cough, so they fixed cloth over their faces to protect themselves. Their clothing was filthy, their faces blackened by soot, ash, and the clogging, stinging dust.

The main ramp leading up to the palaces was choked with traffic as courtiers and servants fled. A fire had broken out in
one wing of the regnant’s palace. It was not easy to push against the flow of bodies frantically flooding away, but by the gates the crush worked to their advantage as they slipped past the guards undetected.

They pressed through the agitated crowd and into the relative quiet of a niche where travelers could water their thirsty mounts. A leering medusa face came into sudden focus as Hanna raised her lantern. The shaking earth had cracked its hair, and a chunk of the bowl had fallen to the ground. Water dripped uneasily from a loose pipe.

“Do you know how to find Sister Rosvita?” Hanna asked.

“I do,” said Fortunatus.

“Then you and I, and you two, will seek her.” She pointed to the young men, who identified themselves as Jerome and Jehan. “Sisters, you must brave the chaos. We’ll need horses, mules, some kind of wagon or cart in case Sister Rosvita is too weak to ride. Blankets. Provisions, if they’re easily come by. Weapons. I use a staff, and a bow. A sword, in dire straits. Knives would be better than nothing.”

“None of us are fighters,” said Fortunatus.

“Make way! Make way for His Honor!”

Hanna glanced out into the dusty courtyard, but the haze and the fitful movement of the torches made it impossible to see what noble courtier or presbyter fled the palace. Perhaps the king had already seen his young queen to safety. Perhaps Henry waited in a smoky hall, unable to make any decision unless another voice spoke in his ear.

She could not dwell on such things. She could, perhaps, save one person tonight. She could not save the entire world.

Aurea and the young women left to seek mounts and a wagon. Fortunatus led them through the servants’ corridors into the palace of the skopos, to the ancient gate where corpses had, in olden days, been hauled down to the river.

Here, by this gate, a set of steps cut down into the foundation of the palace. No guards barred their path. They crept down the stairs cautiously. A rumble rattled under their feet, and they stopped, pressing against the walls, fearing that the masonry walls might collapse and bury them. Jerome moaned in fear.

The old palace seemed stable enough. Downward they
went on stone stairs rubbed smooth by the passage of many feet, down into chambers cut out of bedrock. As they descended, the air cleared, becoming free of the clinging dust that abraded their lungs. They stumbled into the guards’ room. Everyone had fled, leaving a scarred bench and a table with dice and stones scattered heedlessly over the top. A wooden platter bore a half-eaten loaf of bread and a crumb of cheese. Two mugs had overturned, spilling ale over the tabletop, slowly drying up. A single helm molded of leather lay on the floor.

But not everyone could flee. Echoing down the two tunnels that cut deeper into the rock, where cells were hewn to house the prisoners, rose cries for help, prayers, and even one poor soul’s maniacal laughter.

“This way,” said Fortunatus, hurrying down one of the tunnels.

“What about the other prisoners?” asked Jehan. He and Jerome scuttled along like nervous dogs, shoulders hunched.

“Heretics, malefici, and worse,” called Fortunatus. “We dare not let any of them go.”

“I pray you, guardsman! Let me out!”

“Is the world coming to an end?”

“Have mercy! Have mercy!”

“There is no God but Fire!”

The cries resonated. Although muffled by the thick stone walls, the pleas pierced her heart. Would these captive souls be left to die?

She bent to pick up the helm. A rat scurried out of it, running over her fingers, and she shrieked and jumped back, cursing, and slammed into the wall. For an instant, sucking in air that would not come, she thought she would asphyxiate. The walls closed around her, dizzying in the feeble glow of the lamp she still gripped. The air smelled sour. Another tremor might cause the entire palace to fall in on top of them.

They would be buried alive.

“Get hold of yourself!” She kicked over the helm and cautiously picked it up, shook it. No rats. She set it on the table before venturing three steps into the low tunnel that ran opposite the one down which Fortunatus had vanished. She heard, behind her, the scrape of a bar being lifted off a door,
heard close by the scritch of hands, or claws, on the walls, a madman’s chitter, all singsong. The flame wavered in an eddy of air.

Voices.

“—deserting your post!”

“Nay, Sergeant! What does it matter if God chooses them to die? I can’t bear to remain down there where it’s all dark. The walls will cave in. I’m afraid, Sergeant. Don’t make me go! Don’t make me go!”

She ran back into the guardroom. The guards had fled with their weapons. Grabbing the helm, she fastened it over her head, then tested the weight of the bench. If a humble bench could serve as a weapon one time, then it would surely serve again. Mercifully, this was a lighter bench than the long bench she and Rufus had hoisted in St. Asella’s. She hoped Rufus and the other Eagles were all out of the city on the king’s business. She prayed the king was safe.

Up the stairs, the shimmer of a lamp chased away the darkness. She slipped into shadow by the arched opening, the bench braced against her knees, upright. Her arms burned at the weight. Her heart raced.

Distantly, as through a fog, she heard Fortunatus’ voice. “Come, Sister Rosvita. We are here to rescue you.”

“Brother Fortunatus?” So changed was that voice, more like a frog’s croak than a woman’s speech, that Hanna would never have recognized it. But it was not without strength. She sounded weak but not weak-minded, frail but not beaten.

How could anyone survive for two years in such a pit? You might as well be flung into the Abyss.

“I’ll whip you forward if I must!” cried the sergeant. “What are we to say to the skopos if—”

Shadows spilled onto the floor before her feet. She heaved up the bench. The two soldiers lurched into view just as Jehan and Jerome appeared at the mouth of the tunnel with a body carried between them and Fortunatus bringing up the rear.

She brought the bench down hard on the soldiers’ heads before they had time to utter a word. The sergeant went down hard, caught by the full weight of the bench. The soldier staggered forward two steps before his knees buckled under him,
but even so he caught himself on his hands and, on hands and knees, retched. No mercy.

She slammed the bench down on him again, and he fell flat. Blood pooled from his nose. Hanna set down the bench and stripped them of their weapons and belts: a stout spear, a short sword, and two knives.

“No time to get their armor. We’ve got to lock them up.”

The soldier still wasn’t knocked out, but he could only whimper and struggle weakly as she rolled him into the open cell where Rosvita had been confined.

“I pray you, mercy!” he sobbed as he clawed at the ground, trying to get up, but his legs wouldn’t hold him. Blood and vomit smeared his face and the front of his tunic. The sergeant was a dead weight, and Fortunatus had some trouble shifting him, but together they dragged him down the tunnel and, after shoving aside the pleading, weeping soldier, hauled the door shut and dropped the bar into place.

“Oh, God.” A wave of dizziness so overset her that she stumbled and caught herself on the wall, hearing the moans, the cries, beseeching, begging.

“We must go,” said Fortunatus.

It was a nightmare, as though she had fallen into the pit where the souls of all of the people Bulkezu had murdered were trapped forever within stone, never to be free, never to ascend to the Chamber of Light. She was leaving them all behind. She was abandoning them.