The Necromancer's Grimoire (40 page)

“They would not stay behind.”

“No. Of course not. No. That was a foolish question.”

“Not so foolish. It tells me you will be afraid without them.”

“No. I will go to the temple while you are away.”

This brought a frown to his face. “Are you to be a priestess?” She saw his mind work around the assumptions and she saw clearly that he did not like them.

“I have only been invited to learn and study.”

He was relieved. “Good. You are my wife, not a priestess.”

“I am not your wife.” She tipped her head sideways, challenging him with this fact. “I remain, these many months, a reluctant virgin.”

His face hardened. “It is difficult.”

“But it should be easy.” She kissed him and ran her hands over his body, feeling both his reluctance and his desire. “Make me your wife before you go.” She did not say ‘you might not return'. But he heard the words in the silence for he put his lips on hers and kissed her hard. The sword and knives fell to the floor with dull clanks as he swept them from the bed with one arm and lay her down with the other.

“Will you honor me by becoming my wife?”

“I will,” she told him, digging her fingers into the thick muscles of his arms.

He drew back from the kisses, “Now we are man and wife.”

“Almost,” she whispered. “I can feel it…”

“Not yet, you can't.” He leaned on one elbow and with his other hand he slid her gown up around her hips. “But it is imminent.”

They were gone the next day. The tide would not wait and it seemed Montrose would have flown across the sea if he could. He leaped into the little boat that would take them to the ship. He had his bag over his shoulder, his weapons strapped to his body. Alisdair and Garreth kissed her their farewells and joined him. Beside her Thedra dropped to the rocky beach and sobbed her grief into the earth and into the wavelets that touched her hands with every breath of the sea. The boat was released from the pylons that held it fast to the shore. Men took up the oars and the little boat bounced in the waves on its way to the anchored caravel that waited for the tide. Montrose did look back, once. She put a hand to her lips and then raised it to him. He lifted an arm in return, and then turned his face toward Egypt, his hand on the pommel of his great sword.

Nadira hugged herself, remembering his arms around her the night before. She closed her eyes and felt him again inside her, both the hardness of his body and the intensity of his need for her. She smiled, recalling her shuddering pleasure and how she had demanded, “Let's do that again.”

He had answered, breathless, “Give me a moment, wife.” But she had not wanted to wait. Nadira clenched her toes with the memory. She had not waited long.

A loud wail interrupted her thoughts. She glanced down at Thedra's grief. “Come, Thedra. Enough. We have work to do before they return.”

William had not come with them to the harbor. She found William in his room, reading the
Grimoire
. He looked up and closed the book as she entered.

“He is gone, then.”

She nodded, sad, and picked at her sleeve.

“He loves you.”

She lifted her head. “I know he does.”

“He came to me last night while you slept. He stood right there.” William pointed to the doorway to his room. “He came in and said, ‘Will, you must keep her for me while I am gone.”

“Of course. Someone must be guarding me at all times.” They shared a sad smile. “He is the eternal shepherd, is he not?”

William's smile faded. “He looked so wretched, Nadira. This is what he said, ‘Will, my whole world rests upon your shoulders.' Then he turned and leaned against the wall. I was…well, I didn't know what to do. I felt very uncomfortable.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“No. He could not speak. He gripped the lintel for a moment, and then went out. I was still too shocked to reply. I should have said something clever or wise to assure him that I would be here to watch over you. Instead I was silent. Now he is gone. I thought of all the comforting things I could have said to him. Too late.”

“He knows them all.”

William nodded. “He does. But I would have liked to say them aloud.” They sat in silence for a moment, then William said, “I actually feel sorry for Massey.”

Nadira gave a sharp humorless laugh. “Please. No. Do not send your thoughts there.” She already had sent her thoughts there, and was filled with revulsion. She had sent a tendril to Montrose as he set foot on the caravel and was struck full in the face with an intense fury and hot waves of stinking blood. Touching Montrose with a tendril would be unpleasant until Massey was dead. “Do not go there,” she warned him again.

William agreed. “I wanted to say goodbye to him, but he was like a dragon…” He glanced at her. “Or a wolf.”

She put her hand to her throat, remembering the priestess' words. “It might be impossible.”

“His journey, not yours.” William did not meet her eyes as he spoke the
Grimoire's
words.

“Speaking of which,” she look a long cleansing breath. “I must continue mine. You will stay here with Thedra.”

He nodded.

“I will be in ‘touch'…” she turned up the corner of her mouth trying to lighten the mood.

“He gave you to me,” William whispered, resisting her attempt at humor, “To protect for him, like I was a mighty warrior or something. Like Alisdair.”

She looked at the book in his hands. “He knows you are a mighty warrior.”

She made her way to the cleft in the hillside and told Garreth to go back to the villa without her. She carried a small satchel of extra clothing and a comb. She had the
Grimoire
tucked between two folded gowns inside the leather bag.

The priestess glared at the satchel when she set it on the marble bench. “A necessary evil,” she mumbled.

“Evil?” Nadira looked at the satchel as well. “I did not sense that it was evil.”

“The necromancer has tainted it with his desires.” The priestess shook out her hands, making her bracelets tinkle. “But you are correct. It is not evil in itself.'

“That things can be both good and evil is a lesson I have learned just recently.”

The priestess agreed. “This is what you have come here to learn. Any belief in either idea will steer your ability away from the truth.”

“Can you answer some questions first? I have many.”

The priestess laughed. “I would have been disappointed if you came to me full of your own answers. Sit. Ask.”

“The necromancer says that I grow something he wants inside me. I cannot see it.”

The priestess closed her eyes and put a faded hand over hers. “Oh,” she whispered. “I see it.” She opened them and smiled. “No wonder.”

Nadira was alarmed. “What is it?”

“Be still. It is an idea. He…” she closed her eyes again, searching, “He is bound somehow, and cannot free himself. He has an incredible fear and he sees that this thing inside you can save him from it. Oh my,” she breathed, “What has he done?” She looked at Nadira. “It is a rare thing for one to have no fear. How is it you have accomplished this?”

She was puzzled. “I have many fears. I do not know what you mean.”

The priestess touched her heart. “Those fears are for others, not for yourself.”

Nadira thought about that. “You are correct,” she said. “I don't know that I lost my fear…I remember being numb and feeling nothing for a long while. There was that moment after the battle on the mountain. I was afraid. I was afraid to go on, and afraid to go back. I asked myself what I feared, and I saw it.” She turned to the priestess, “but I replaced the fear with a sense that it didn't matter either way. I decided to follow my lord Montrose because I admired his courage, and that of his brother. Their strength shamed me in my fear. There was a feeling of giving up myself. That can't be a good replacement either.”

“You interpret the feeling as surrender. What you felt was the peace that comes from understanding that you control your emotions. What you think manifests itself in your body as fear or hate or love. You changed your thoughts away from your safety and to his, and the fear faded. When one puts the welfare of others before one's own, the fear has nothing to grasp. It is that simple. It matters not what drives the thought away from yourself. All mothers know this. There are few that would run away in fear as the lion stalks their infant.

“Yes.” Nadira felt the flash of a distant memory.

“And it is an idea you incubate. The necromancer cannot think that thought. It is a thought that would free him from this nameless terror that stalks him. He is incapable of this selflessness that you possess.”

“How can he steal that from me?” Nadira pressed her belly. “How can he steal an idea?”

“As you know, only what one has learned, can one use. He seeks to take this strength from you without earning it.” She lost her focus, casting for the necromancer. “He is that desperate.”

Nadira felt small. “I have encountered him.”

The priestess nodded. “Yes. I was there.”

She looked at the aged lady in her blue veils and white hair. “Can you help me?
Can we confront him together?”

“Come with me, Nadira. Let me show you the temple.” The priestess stood and offered Nadira her hand. Her eyes were kind, but Nadira saw that the diversion was a gentle way of telling her that she would face the necromancer alone. She gave the older women her hand and allowed her to lead her through an opening in the stone.

“We used to have a glorious temple on the hill, marble columns and statues of all the great priestesses going back hundreds of years. People came from every corner of the world to study in our library. We had lectures, study groups, song, dance, parties, and feasts. The joy of existence was worshipped there.” The priestess led her to another chamber, larger than the first, lit with small oil lamps on ledges carved directly into the living stone. The ceiling disappeared into the gloom above her head. Water and fresh air were evident even so deep in the ground. “But when Justinian became emperor a thousand years ago, he had the temple pulled down and the priestess killed. Our acolytes fled with as many scrolls as they could carry, but they could not save everything. What remained behind was burned. We were dispersed and hidden in the houses of powerful people who remained faithful to our work, but without an assembly to build upon the strengths of the gifted and educate them, many of our skills and abilities were lost.”

The priestess sat her on a carved bench near a tiny waterfall that dripped down the stone and splashed into a shallow basin at her feet. “We found this cave and hid from Justinian. It has remained secret ever since. Those who seek to discover the truth and live in knowledge and peace find their way here and I take them in and keep them.”

Nadira nodded, remembering when she first heard the priestess' voice in her head. “You cannot live on water, Lady. How do you sustain yourselves?”

The priestess shook her bracelets and three young women emerged through a crevasse in the stone. One carried a lamp, one carried a pitcher and one carried a tray. They set their burdens on a raised plinth and bowed. The priestess smiled at them as they departed. “We provide services, as we always have, in exchange for food and wine and oil. On certain days we will receive guests in a place far removed from here. It is always a risk we take, but there are those who have dedicated their lives to protecting us from the Christians and the Muslims. Those who need to know the future or be healed are informed and healed. In exchange for our services, we are able to exist and maintain the teachings necessary to make certain these gifts are not lost to mankind.”

She poured wine into a horn cup and handed it to Nadira. “Welcome, Nadira the Reader.”

“Thank you,” she drank the sweet wine, inhaling the fragrance. It was very fine wine. “You have important guests. I can taste their quality.”

“And we also serve those who cannot pay.” The priestess drank from her own cup. “The knowledge of the ancients is not for sale to the rich. It belongs free to all people. But we must keep body and soul together while we are here.”

Nadira looked around the chamber. “Many live here? All women?”

“There are thirty of us. And yes, all women. The men of our religion live in the city. They have lives of citizens and laborers. Women cannot have such a life, as you know. They must belong to a man at menarche and lose their freedom to study or think. Those that show promise come here. I keep them.”

“I begin to understand. But they are imprisoned as well. Just as you are.”

The priestess turned her head to look at her. “Our bodies, perhaps.”

“Oh. True.” Nadira tried to imagine a life where the great events of one's life took place in the other worlds, and the physical one was more like a dream. She shook her head. “I have so much to learn.”

“Then let us begin now and waste no time. I need you to lie down here on this couch and let me look inside. I need to see if he still has anything attached to you.” Nadira was led through the gloom to a stone couch piled high with stuffed cushions. “Lie here. Clear your mind, and let me in.”

She relaxed and tried to drive her worries away. Montrose was lifted from her mind and set away on the caravel to Egypt. William was sent to the library in Toledo. Garreth and Alisdair to a sunny garden. The Templars were set down in a cathedral before an altar. She had trouble with the
reis
. Kemaleddin did not go when she tried to send him away. She tried to put him out to sea on the new flagship the sultan had built for him, the glorious
Goke,
a floating palace with three banks of oars and many cannon
.
He would not stay. She tried to place him in his walled garden in Istanbul, but he faded among the climbing jasmine and trumpet vines to appear before her again. She sent him to Piri, and told the young captain to hold tightly to his uncle. Piri recoiled from her touch and fled, leaving Kemal behind.