The Codex Lacrimae (24 page)

“What do you mean, Khajen?” Ríg asked. “If they're Mongols, or any other force from the land of Cathay, I don't think that they'd distinguish between the Levant's religious orders.”

“They'd recognize a Hospitaller uniform if its colors and emblem had been described to them.”

“True,” Ríg agreed, “but why discriminate? Every Mongol invasion shows a total lack of concern for whomever they conquer. They might've chased Mercedier and his party to waylay or kill them, but not simply because they're Hospitallers.”

“The scouting party would discriminate because I think they'd been told to look for a particular Hospitaller. Believe me, those warriors have enough incentive to pursue anyone wearing your order's uniform.” Ibn-Khaldun hesitated. “Indeed, I'm impressed that any of your
expeditio
made it back to the Krak in one piece, Mercedier.”

“This entire army is looking for a single knight, Master?” Ríg interrupted. “Forgive me, but that seems hard to believe.”

Ibn-Khaldun started to reply, then reached instead into one of the saddlebags that he'd dropped upon the floor before sitting down. He fumbled briefly at the clasp and withdrew an enormous book. It was black, leather-bound, with thousands of yellowing pages pressed tightly between the covers of its spine. He hefted the book with two hands and handed the tome to Ríg.

“This is the Codex Lacrimae, Ríg,” Ibn Khaldun said, watching carefully as the Hospitaller shifted the book into a comfortable position in his hands. “Have you heard of it?”

“The Book of Tears?” Ríg translated as he scanned the exterior of the book with a practiced eye. He paused, then opened the cover, looking up at Ibn Khaldun. “It looks ancient, but, no, I haven't heard of this work.”

“Neither had I, until six months ago,” Ibn Khaldun said. “I'm glad to hear you say this, my friend, for it would've been difficult to have borne this here knowing that you'd hidden such a thing from me.”

“Excuse me,” Damian said, “but what does this
book
have to do with the Hospitaller that you say the eastern army is after?”

“The army is after the member of your order who owns the Codex; or, at least, whom they and I assume owns it.”

“
Jesu
,
” Ríg whispered. He'd opened the cover of the black book, and was reading something in the frontispiece.

“My family name's in here, Khajen!”

“What family name?” Perdieu asked, moving quickly forward, trying to see inside the frontispiece. “I was told you were orphaned at Mecina.”

He halted next to Ríg, but the squire had already snapped the Codex shut and brought the book to Arcadian, who held it now closed in his lap.

“We'll get to such matters, later,” the Grand Master said curtly to Perdieu, “if ever.” He returned a frowning countenance to Ibn-Khaldun. “It's hard to believe that a book from the East would have a western name inscribed in it. The trade routes are growing, but not that quickly. This tome looks ancient.”

“I know, my friend, but the truth is there. Whatever the origin, Ríg, I'm afraid that the name inscribed there has traveled farther afield than any Christian's ever traveled,” Ibn Khaldun shook his head sadly. “I was at the foot of the great Himalayas when I took possession of it.”

Ibn-Khaldun turned to his apprentice.

“Now, it's my turn to apologize, Ríg. I fear that my mistake won't be as easily undone as Marcus's presence on the
expeditio
.
I've brought this thing here because of the name inside of it, but, as I dreaded, you know nothing about it.” Ibn Khaldun looked regretfully at Arcadian. “For perhaps the first time in my life since Mecina, I was afraid of something, and I let that fear govern my decisions. I should take this thing into the desert and let it have its will with me.”

“Let a
book
have its will
.
..
?” Perdieu exclaimed. “Will no one listen? I demand —”

“You demand nothing, at this moment,” Arcadian snapped. “I think that we'll be having a full council after the news of this afternoon, but please let Ibn-Khaldun finish!”

“There's not much more to say, old friend. I've been pursued for the past half year, and perhaps personalized too much the extent to which those who have hunted me would go to retrieve the Codex. It became a game of hunter and hunted, and I see now that that's exactly the place they wanted my mind to be.” He looked at Ríg. “I didn't think that they could bring armies to their command.”

“Wait a minute,” Perdieu roared incredulously, disregarding the grand master's warning. He wouldn't have his apprentice continually upstaging him, especially now considering this apparently new danger. “I've heard enough of the talk, understand less about all the politics, but I
do
see that book. Are you earnestly saying that this army from the East is coming for this book?” The Burgundian noble looked with sneering disbelief at his squire. “For Ríg?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying,” Ibn-Khaldun replied, turning his attention to his student. “Upon reflection, I see now that I've led them right to you, Ríg. My hunters might've otherwise taken
years
to find you, but in running pell-mell here without thinking, I've led them to you with only six months of their time lost.”

Chapter 12

The Screaming Pillars of Raj al-Jared

“That's impossible,” Ríg said coldly, his anger breaking the silence that descended among those gathered in the chamber.

He walked across the room and stood before the grand master and Ibn-Khaldun.

“May I see it again, Father Arcadian?” Ríg murmured as he helped the elderly man heft the tome off his lap.

“I demand to see it, too!” Perdieu exclaimed, advancing forward a step with a serious enough intent that Damian rose from his chair and interceded. “This is my squire — by law and custom, whatever comes to him must first be approved by me.”

“Bernard, enough,” Arcadian said wearily. “If the book is Ríg's, then it's his.”

“As far as I know, it's
not
mine, Master Arcadian,” Ríg said as he looked again at the interior cover of the Codex Lacrimae. I don't understand. My family's background is mercantile — Sicilian. We're at the opposite end of the world from the Himalayas.”

He carried the book to the open window and held it up in the light to scan the interior cover and first pages more closely. He frowned. A mysterious sound arose from the tome, like an undercurrent of Gregorian chant heard from a distance, and colors started to flare in his mind.

“Ríg?”

“
Oui,
Master
,
je vais bien.
I'm fine.”

“Good. About that inscription,” Ibn-Khaldun said, “it's not just the name, Ríg. Look more closely at the ink.”

The youth stared for a moment at the frontispiece, and then fixed a hard gaze at his elder friend.

“It's calligraphied and a brownish-red...blood?”

“I believe so, yes.”

Ríg touched the inscription and an arcane whispering began,
this time, though, the strange sounds were accompanied by an onslaught of images that made the teenager almost stagger backwards.

The life of a friend.

At the whisper in his mind, Ríg recoiled and almost dropped the tome. Then flashes and images filled his sight.

A shimmer of yellow, and he was in a forest, with sun streaming late-afternoon light upon a fast-flowing river — Ríg knelt to retrieve a leathern packet as a stunningly beautiful brown-haired woman ran to him. She was moving with a desperate speed and shouting for him to do something, panic widening her ovaline, sea-green eyes as she hurtled down a slope to prevent his touching the packet.

A sparkle of white, and he suddenly stood shivering beside the same girl in a vast, marbled hall the color of bleached bone. The passage stretched for hundreds of cubits, lined with windows as high as oak trees, and so cold that the floor and walls were rimed with frost, causing the couple's breath to float in grey vapors, and then Ríg felt the girl's tanned hand slip into his own as a cloaked skeleton approached with outstretched, bony fingers.

A flash of orange, and now he sat cross-legged before a fire in a campsite glade. The athletic beauty sat next to him, crouched beneath the same kind of fur cloak that seemed to weigh heavily on him. Across the blazing flames he saw two men speaking to him with unmistakable menace. Ríg glanced at the girl and she said something reassuring, a coy smile on her full lips.

Beware the Norns who play dice with the fates of men; their comeliness is beguiling, but born of witchcraft and perilous.

The words themselves sounded feminine, whispered in a melodious language on the periphery of Ríg's knowledge, yet he still understood them. His perceptions returned to normal and he found himself back in Arcadian's chambers.

“What was that, Khajen? Did you say something about Norns? Or, witchcraft?”

“I said nothing, but I don't doubt that you've heard some words,” Ibn-Khaldun said.

“How's that?”

“Nothing, for now.”

“Khajen,” Ríg said softly as he closed the book, “tell us…tell
me
what this means.” He lowered the book to his side and tried to hold it casually. Ríg began to feel divided, part of his attention fixed on Ibn-Khaldun and the others, but his thoughts mostly on the visions and, particularly, the striking young girl featured in all of them.

He focused past the distractions. “You can't seriously expect us to believe that my family has anything to do with this, nor with the armies?”

“My young friend, I've been carrying this cursed thing for half a year, wrestling with that very question.” Ibn-Khaldun replied.

Then, the scholar's gaze hardened and his tone became slightly reprimanding. “As for not believing the message, you'd do well to do so immediately, Stripling. I didn't train your mind so that you'd refuse to entertain possibilities just because you don't yet understand the nature of them.”

“
D'accord
,
” Ríg agreed quietly, but the words of his master vexed him. He refused to let Ibn-Khaldun's interpretation of this strange book be the sole explanation. To do so would mean that Ríg himself (or a member of his family) was responsible for at least one of the armies massing outside the Krak des Chevaliers!

Ríg returned the Codex Lacrimae to the table. The sensation of being in two worlds returned as he walked to the corner of the room where the Grand Master sat.

In one reality he was making his way across the flagstoned floor of the Krak and then, in a twinkle of grey light, he was on a steeply angled trail in the midst of a ferocious blizzard, hiking up a rocky stair whose granite steps were covered with snow drifts.

The vision was a mountain path, and he was serving as rear guard to a company that included the vivacious brown-haired girl from the earlier wave of daydreams —
for what else can these scenes be
,
he thought,
but waking dreams?
She now was clad in a hunter's outfit that accentuated the sensual lines of her physique; he also noted that this time she had a dagger at her slim waist and held a quarterstaff as she ascended the snowy stairs. An enormous man loped up the mountainside in front of her. He wore a cloak of furs, had heavily bearded features and thick, shoulder-length hair. Indeed, in the flashing moment of supernatural sight, Ríg thought the man not to be a man at all, but a wolf. Beside him was a blond-haired woman who wore hunter's togs, but she was shorter in stature than the familiar girl he was getting used to seeing. The huntress held a bow and had a quiver full of arrows strapped to her back.

As he tried to understand the meaning of it all, the scene shifted to an underground cavern where four gigantic stone beings were attacking, each monster thrice the height of a man! The giants launched themselves at the group and the dream melted into something else, into another place and another time.

He rubbed a couple fingers against his temple and furrowed his brows, trying to dispel this last image.

In a flaring of crimson light, he found himself in a comfortable mountain chalet. A fire crackled high in the stone-faced hearth before him and Ríg saw himself lying on the floor next to the now mysteriously familiar girl, her head resting on his shoulder as he put his arm around her to go to sleep!

Even though Ríg had felt an immediate attraction to the girl in the previous visions, lying under heavy fur coverlets in a cabin somewhere was the last place that the aspiring priest and scholar expected to be — he'd already taken preliminary vows of chastity and obedience to the Church in his training for Holy Orders, and this last scene completely ran counter to the direction of (and expectations about) the life he was trying to lead.

Clarinda...her name is Clarinda
,
the voice in his mind informed him.
Watch and ware, Hospitaller, watch and ware. Her aspect of Fate is the one most dangerous to men, binding into herself all that was, is, and will be. Call her Urd — she runs with Death and shows no fear…