The Crystal Empire (11 page)

Out of grudging self-protection, he, too, took a bite from Frae’s g
i
gantic onion before returning to his work. Willi whimpered, wanting some as well.

It was denied him.

“Knowing all we know of such things, we’d have been in utter dar
k
ness about what was happening with her. I still am, half the time.”

The young man sat cross-legged at the girl’s feet, a yard of thin, soft deerskin in his own lap. In his hands were a bit of dull-tipped antler and a fist-size lump of glassy stone. With the horn, he bore down hard upon a corner of the flint.

There was a crackle.

“Damn!”
he shouted, throwing stone and horn down, sucking at a knuckle where dark blood welled from a small, straight-sided cut. “How do the Red Men do it?”

“They don’t”—Owaldsohn guffawed—“Whene’er they can get steel trade-points from us. What make you there, anywise?”

Sedrich gave the man a brief, peculiar look. “Why, naught of import, Father. Another experiment.”

2

Outside the snowbanked window, with little save his misery to keep him warm, Hethri Parcifal listened.

Things were coming to a critical pass. He couldn’t pretend much longer that he didn’t know his daughter was with child. Already the vi
l
lage women were looking at him in the same wise as just before his wife, Frae’s mother, had...

No use thinking about that.

Nor could he pretend the fact that Frae spent all her time with the next-door neighbors—instead of with the man he’d chosen for her—had aught to do with her employment.

Peering through the dense-steamed window, he watched Sedrich, i
n
tent upon his mysterious flint-knapping, wondering what vile mischief the young devil was preparing now, there in that same lap where he’d ruined Parcifal’s only child.

Just like her faithless
—
no!

Backing upon his frozen belly through the snowdrift, Parcifal was grat
e
ful to Owaldsohn for the oversolicitude the blacksmith was wont to show his dogs. He’d not leave them out upon a night like this, bred to it though they be. As they baked, indolent, before the fire, Parcifal could a
p
proach without risk of their fangs and listen.

And plan.

A prudent distance away, he rose, brushing wet, heavy snow from his clothing. Racing to his own house, cold and dark by contrast to the Owaldsohns’, lonely, he dragged his own dogs from the kennel, hitched them to their cart. They snarled and nipped at one another, tangling their traces. Seating himself in the cart, he whipped them to attention, drove them out into the road.

Too far it was to trek this night afoot to the compound of the Brot
h
erhood of Jesus in Hell.

The ride, five minutes’ walk upon a summer’s day, took more than an hour, the dogs just able to haul the cart through the wind-drift, their ma
s
ter squinting through the driven flakes to steer them. He reached the vi
l
lage headquarters of the Cult sooner than he knew, however, passing b
e
tween the gateposts without seeing them. Aside from the few candles the penurious flagellants allowed themselves, no other light was there to tell him he’d arrived.

In the middle of the compound yard, he stopped, handing the reins to the sick-looking probationary in a dirty robe who’d unwittingly served as a milepost.

The tattoos at the fellow’s temples were as yet seeping raw.

“Take these animals somewhere. Let them warm up.” He indicated the cart. “There is food for them there. See you give it to them, instead of di
s
tributing it among your number.”

“As always, Hethri Parcifal, thou’rt the soul of generosity,” a voice behind him wheezed in the darkness.

Parcifal turned to see Oln Woeck watching him, soiled robe pulled up against the cold, a humorless half-smile upon the old man’s thin lips. Behind him, more shadow than substance, were his eternal pair of young, husky companions.

“As always, Oln Woeck, your order pays as little as it can get away with for aught it takes. And that is plenty. I bear it—and you—few cha
r
itable thoughts.”

“There we differ, dearest friend. In my heart, I’ve naught but the most cordial thoughts for thee and thine,
good
Hethri Parcifal, peac
e
keeper and paragon.”

Parcifal shuddered in response, perhaps only with the cold.

The sole illumination in the yard streamed from the open double doors of the common central building, where a circle of Brothers knelt about the reclining form of one of their own number. The man rested upon a raised platform, the focal point of light from tallow candles res
t
ing in every niche and wall-projection visible. Even out here in the fr
o
zen air, the odor of putrefaction was unmistakable.

Curious, Parcifal repressed an urge to retch and stepped closer. I
n
side, the victim gave a feeble moan, tossing his head. Clearly, he su
f
fered from gangrene, the undressed fracture at his ankle swollen glossy black, bone fragments thrusting white through outraged flesh. Mumbled prayers rose from the group round him, slipping out the door like smoke, and drifting into the unseen overcast sky.

Astonished, Parcifal realized he’d known men injured worse than this to recover with the proper care. Why didn’t the Brothers—that quick with the axe when they encountered “blasphemy”—do something? He turned to make some comment to Oln Woeck. He saw the leader’s face. Three hundred candles blazed inside the room. Not a flicker lit the co
m
pound yard. What it wouldn’t give to life, the Cult squandered upon death.

Perhaps one fewer of them by daybreak might be a blessing.

Oln Woeck beckoned Parcifal to the front of one of many huts su
r
rounding the bleak establishment. His companions followed. In the tr
a
dition of the Brotherhood, the leader’s was no better than any of the ot
h
er huts, being of rammed earth, not perhaps the best choice for this cl
i
mate. It showed sign of continuous incompetent repair.

As he shut the raw planked door, Oln Woeck began to fumble with a tinderbox, purposing to light a candle, while Parcifal clapped his hands u
p
on his upper arms in vain attempt to keep them warm. Oln Woeck’s co
m
panions disposed themselves in the shadows at two corners of the room. As one sat cross-legged and vacant of expression, picking his nose, the other sprawled, rooting through the clothing at his loins. He commenced a crude rhythm, grunting in time with the motion of his cupped hands.
“We believe
—
unh, unh
—
we believe
—
unh, unh
—
we b
e
lieve in the Father, Maker of Hea
v
en and earth, and in...”

Disgusted, Parcifal sat upon a worn, tilt-legged wooden stool. There was no fire, not even a hearth for it, such being forbidden by several stringent doctrines of the Cult, nor was any other hospitality offered the vis
i
tor—who’d no reason to appreciate the outrageous profligacy the single candle represented.

He reflected upon the leader’s earlier, peculiarly cordial greeting, f
i
nally replying, “As long as you get what you want—what you extort from me!”

“What’st thou say? Ah, yes, I recall.” Oln Woeck made clucking sounds with his tongue. “Now, now, Hethri Parcifal, the price of silence is high. Wouldst thou liefer face the open wrath of our Brotherhood in this affair, or continue reaping thy illicit benefits—benefits I’ve not e’en asked thee to share—”

“Yet!”

“—yet, with us?”

Old anger flared within the younger man, squeezing his eyes shut against his will. For a moment, he wished he could feel the blood-haze which sometimes possessed warriors such as Owaldsohn, rendering them omnipotent, invulnerable.

Alas, when he opened his eyes again and looked down, all he saw was himself.

“I recall no teaching which forbids trade with foreigners!”

Oln Woeck chuckled. “With the Invader, Hethri, with the Invader. Nor do I, in God’s truth. But wouldst thou like it common knowledge? We’ve been o’er this before. In the end, thou reckoned it worth the price. How
is
thy little daughter, anywise? I see her—and thy gran
d
child-to-be—that se
l
dom these days.”

A father’s outraged horror swept through Parcifal, but the diplomat within him stifled it.

“E’en now I fail to understand what you want with her. Would you sire offspring in your dotage you couldn’t before now—”

“Silence, thou base hypocrite!”
Oln Woeck rasped, his yellow eyes afire, the markings standing out upon his shaven temples. Abruptly he mellowed. “Thou speakest aright, good Hethri. I’m an old man, with an old man’s craving for a woman’s warm young body. Though my usage with her shall be the same—
exactly
the same—as for these”—he ind
i
cated his companions, slouched against the earthen wall, with a co
n
temptuous flip of a ve
i
ny hand—“who pleaseth me no longer.”

He shook his head. “At one time in my life I thought it well to have their temperament, shall I say, ameliorated—why, thou appearest pu
z
zled, friend Parcifal. Could it be I’ve let a little secret of our Brothe
r
hood slip by to an unbeliever? But look’st thou upon them, upon the si
g
il of our order.”

Controlling his unease, Parcifal bent aside upon his stool, examining the Sacred Heart tattoo upon the left side of the companion’s head. The blue dye concealed a small, deep, circular scar.

He turned to Oln Woeck, a terrifying suspicion growing within him, “What does it signify?”

“Compliance.” Oln Woeck chuckled. “Pure, disminded compliance, to the Brotherhood, to my e’ery whim.”

Parcifal sprang up, knocking the stool over.
“You’d do this to my daughter?’”

Oln Woeck made patting motions at the air in front of him. “Sittest thou,
merchant
. And what if I intended so? We’ve a bargain, haven’t we? Yet be not afraid. E’en that chirurgical improvement will not be foisted upon her. I should prefer her, um, somewhat resistant—at least in the b
e
ginning.”

“But what excuse can I offer the village, Oln Woeck, for giving her wholly to you? You can’t father children upon her, and in any case, young Sedrich—”

“Aha! Now thou perceivest, dost thou not, the reason for my recent tolerance? Get thee home, Hethri Parcifal. Upon the morrow wilt thou make announcement that I and my betrothed have conceived a child and are in haste impetuous but seemly to be wed.”

3

As the single smoky candle flickered, scattering grotesque shadows, the men at the battered table spoke a while longer, in particular concer
n
ing young Sedrich Sedrichsohn and his warrior sire. Oln Woeck had given the matter much thought.

After a time, a reassured Hethri Parcifal burrowed back out into the night, no longer fearful of the naked steel-edged wrath of the Owal
d
sohns. As he latched the door behind the unbeliever’s back, Oln Woeck rubbed his bony hands together before he caught himself at it. Likewise he fought—and defeated—a look of unrestrained glee which had threa
t
ened to settle itself upon his taut-stretched features.

“So mote it be!”

From a corner, one of his young companions looked up in dull i
n
comprehension.

Oln Woeck nodded. “It beginneth. Let the parasite attribute my d
e
signs upon his tender youngling to the stirrings of senescent lust. The wisest lie hath yet an admixture of truth; the wisest conspiracy is a co
n
spiracy of one—ne’er forgetting thee, of course, who shareth my every thought.”

Bringing the candle-stub, Oln Woeck took the young man by the hand, bidding him arise. He led him over to the pallet where the other young man dozed now, blew the candle out, and settled himself between the two warm bodies.

“‘But what of the Sisterhood?’” he mocked Parcifal, more to himself than to companions incapable of understanding. “’Twas aught that si
m
pe
r
ing craven could ask about, did we no sooner dispose of the question of the stripling father. As well he might.”

Flesh slapped naked flesh.

There were other noises.

‘“A boy-baby,’ reasoneth our mendacious merchant, ‘can someday be sealed safely unto the Brotherhood.’” Oln Woeck caressed a scarred and tattooed temple. “Doubtless he contemplated thy decorations with some comfort. ‘But a girl-baby’d be of special interest to that witch-woman Ilse and thus constitute a threat.’”