The Crystal Empire (13 page)

Sedrich shouted, “I speak against it, you scabrous—”

“Hearing no one
fit
to speak—” Oln Woeck began. He was interrup
t
ed by a cry from Frae.

“No!
Do not leave me with this creature! I beg—”

“Silence!
This is childish hesitation, hysteria, brought about by her cond
i
tion! We are man and wife!”

“Sedrich!”

The shout came this time from the house. “Sedrich, your father—”

Rolling beneath the imprisoning foot, Sedrich seized the naked ankle of the distracted monk—Oln Woeck’s other bodyguard. He kicked u
p
ward, hard, his heel stopping in the man’s crotch. The side of his fist took the man’s knee. The joint crumpled with a crackling noise. Leaping to his feet, the young man brought one of them down upon the a
n
guished face, hea
r
ing bone crackle again.

He ran the well-worn pathway toward the sound of his mother’s voice.

Ilse met her son as he pushed past her through the open door, wet soil dripping in his wake. In the room beyond, great Sedrich Owaldsohn lay sprawled in a chair, eyes blankly open, his head half shaven, the remai
n
ing lock already braided for mortal combat.

He was dead.

Before him, upon a low setee, lay
Murderer,
unsheathed and oiled. Rubbing wet and dirty hands on his scarcely cleaner breechclout, Sedrich swept the weapon up, unnoticing of its great weight. Time enough to mourn his father later, if he were still alive to—

A sudden commotion arose behind him.

Sedrich turned to see Hethri Parcifal push past Ilse into the room, seizing her copper staff. He pushed her against the heavy door. With an u
n
earthly snarl, Willi leapt at Parcifal’s throat. He didn’t reach it. The sharp end of Ilse’s staff penetrated the dog’s body, slamming Parcifal against the wall, where he barely kept his feet. Willi fell, awkward with the weapon through his body, silent as his master.

“No, Klem!”
Sedrich shouted as the older dog advanced upon Parc
i
fal. He strode forward. Almost unbidden,
Murderer
swept up in a glitte
r
ing crescent, descending with all of Sedrich’s conscious strength behind it, cu
t
ting the screaming man at the collarbone, silencing his screams as it clove him to the waist, spilling him across the polished hardwood floor. The flesh which had been Hethri Parcifal fell over the furry inert form of the dog. Where it had been sundered, it steamed in torchlight coming through the door.

Oln Woeck had followed to the house.

Behind him, his remaining body-servant, eyes crossed with pain, was supported on his ruined leg by a pair of Brothers. Mindless fury filled the old man’s face, lashed by shadow and torchlight. Frae lay sobbing, propped upon one arm, at his feet, her long tresses still wrapped about his bony fist.

“This day, young Sedrich, thou’st proven thyself twice a murderer, lik
e
wise many times a dabbler in forbidden art.” The Cult leader turned to a
d
dress those behind him. “Our laws stateth not which is worse, but ho
l
deth they’re the same. The punishment—”

“You’ll do the being punished, Oln Woeck! You’ve killed my f
a
ther!”

Oln Woeck whirled to face the threat. A dozen men stepped between their leader and the young sword-wielder, armed with long, heavy staves. Where their robes fell clear of their bodies, Sedrich could see heavy mu
s
cles. Oln Woeck sighed, assuming an air of tired patience.

“Be your father dead, ’tis of thy mischief. Now acceptest thou the judgment of thy fellowmen, Sedrich Sedrichsohn. The punishment for thy crimes is merciful. Moreo’er, ’tis voluntary—thou’rt to make the Choice.”

One overzealous among Oln Woeck’s company stepped forward, leveling his staff at Sedrich. Almost unthinking, Sedrich sliced the man’s wea
p
on in half with a short swipe of
Murderer
.

The man stepped back.

“The Choice?” Sedrich echoed. “The Choice ’tween what and what?”

“’Tween exile,” intoned the old man, “from home, family, village, canton, to go where no man knoweth thy crime, and...”

It wouldn’t do, thought Sedrich. His gentle Frae lay full upon the ground now, her sobs having given way to the ungentle sleep of failed strength.

He
must
stay to fight this—

“...and mutilation. The loss of the hand which hath offended us, as is the custom.”

Sedrich blinked. “As once you did to Harold Bauersohn, the fletc
h
er?”

Oln Woeck grinned a skull’s grin. “’Twould end thy tinkering fore
v
er. Thou’d best be upon thy way, boy.”

Sedrich stepped a measured pace to the doorway of his dead father’s home. Shifting the greatsword to his left hand, he spoke for all to hear. “Oln Woeck, you’re a liar. You’ll not escape such punishment as I’ve in mind for you. Let this be token of it!”

Without further word, he slapped the doorframe with his right hand, swung the greatsword with his left. Oln Woeck’s eyes grew wide with shock. The blade bit deeply into wood as Sedrich’s hand parted from the wrist and fell into the mud.

There was a gout of blood.

He was surprised to feel no pain.

Behind him, his mother screamed until a scarlet gossamer descended over his eyes.

He lost consciousness.

“O unbelievers, I serve not what you serve....”—
The Koran
, Sura CIX

“’
T
is useless, Helga,” Ilse muttered, “we’ve lost her.”

Sedrich awoke in black, furious confusion, senses sharpened like those of a hurt and hunted animal. What was this he overheard of losing
her?
His father, he remembered—with an agony not much less painful than being cloven by the greatsword
Murderer
—was dead, struck down by the shock and rage of what had been done to his only son. Willi, too, was gone, fierce, faithful Willi, he whom Sedrich had expected would outlive his own sire, Klem, by at least a decade.

The next words which came to Sedrich bathed his heart in ebon flame. “And the child, Sister Ilse?”

“Come two moons early, and no nurse to give it sustenance, e’en did it survive? I fear me ’tis but a matter of a few hours, good Helga. We’ve done our uttermost, thanks to you for your aid, but...what am I going to tell my son?”

The neighbor-woman made clucking noises.

Struggling to arise from where he lay, the young man took first note of his surroundings. He was in his parents’ chamber, lying on their great bed, the draperies so close-drawn he couldn’t tell the hour of the day. A pair of chimneyed oil-lamps burned before the mirror upon a dark, car
v
en chest, throwing redoubled light, quadrupled shadows, about the room. He lay helpless, he discovered, unable to do more than lift his head, and this but feebly.

The shadows writhed upon the walls.

Gathering his strength—blackness boiled within him, driving out weakness—he tried again. A sharp, painful constriction across his chest caused him to think once more in anguish upon his father. Fears for himself were groundless: a rope had been passed round the bed to hold him down. Without thought, he reached toward the knot. He felt a tug against the m
o
tion, heard a clatter—

—and remembered his right hand was gone.

In its place, he wore a heavy bandage, reaching past his elbow. The ruined limb had been bound, likeliest by his mother, and suspended from its wrappings upon a nail, driven without care for the ornate be
d
stead from whence it hung, wrist uppermost, elbow down. He thought it odd that he felt but little pain. Perhaps that would come later. He could flex the fingers of his missing hand as if they still existed.

Sedrich rolled, loosening the bindings with his left hand. He untied the rope holding him to the mattress. The ends fell to the floor, where they passed beneath the bed. Sitting up, he observed even these small efforts had not been without cost: a red stain had sprung forth upon his bandage, spreading. Sweat rolled down his cheeks, his forehead, tric
k
ling to the base of his neck.

No matter.

Setting bare feet upon the carpet, he arose, supporting himself upon one of the tall posts at the foot of the bed. After a time, he staggered across the room to the doorjamb, where he leaned, breathing. His breechclout, vest, and dagger lay upon the dresser, between the lamps. He rea
l
ized for the first time that, save the dressings of his wound, he was naked. With a clu
m
sy gesture, he swept up his possessions, making his way out through the open door.

Waves of nausea became Sedrich’s world for a nameless time. His jou
r
ney along the short upper hallway, down the stairflight to the main floor, whence he’d heard his mother’s voice, he accomplished in a hazy dream. When he arrived, it was to a room rearranged almost beyond recognition. A fire blazed high in the three-sided hearth. Daylight ou
t
side—early mor
n
ing, judging by the yellow light filtering through the snow-cloud ove
r
cast—filled the room with a sick, shadowless glare. Yet every lamp the fa
m
ily possessed, save the pair upstairs, shone bright.

Furniture had been pushed out of the way, against the whitewashed walls, the great dining-table draped in linen white as the snow still fal
l
ing outside the windows.

Her eyes open wide, Frae lay, motionless and silent, upon the table.

Blood was everywhere.

Staggering across the room, Sedrich knew before he reached her that, whatever had animated this beloved face, those slim hands he knew so well, it was gone forever. At her side, he touched her still-warm cheek, bent to kiss her upon unmoving, waxen lips.

“Sedrich!”

Ilse Sedrichfrau, Mistress of the Sisterhood, looked up from where she sat beside the table, lifting her sweat-matted head from her blood-bespattered forearms.

Helga Haroldsfrau slumped in a corner of the room by the great wi
n
dow, staring at the snowfall which concealed the ocean. She held a small, still bundle in her arms, crooning to it as tears streamed down her fat, care-weathered face.

Sedrich felt no wish to examine what she held.

“’Twas too early, too long in coming”—-Ilse sighed in weariness—”and little Frae too young to withstand it.”

“What?” Sedrich had heard the words. Somehow they’d failed to ca
r
ry any meaning to him.

Pushing up from the table, his mother arose from her seat, a stool Owaldsohn had been used to prop his feet upon before the fire.

She wiped stained hands along her robe-clad thighs.

“’Tis the curse of our people, my son.” She spread a hand toward the table. “Birthing comes hard upon us—when it comes at all. E’en the Red Men, who know little of medicine or cleanliness outbreed us ten to one. Each year, methinks, our numbers dwindle a little.”

Sedrich caught his mother’s eye and knew she was lying—or, at the least, attempting to distract him. If Frae were lost to him, what mattered any of this talk?

The blackness inside him boiled and boiled.

“Where,” he asked in a voice the evenness of which he marveled at, “is Oln Woeck?”

“Sedrich, this is the blood-haze speaking, else you’d not e’en be standing up now upon your own. ’Tis rest you need, contemplation to control it, lest it take you o’er, kill you as it did your...” She stopped a moment. “...as it did your father. ’Twill do no one any good to take r
e
venge now.”

“Yes, Mother, my father—your husband—is dead. “’Twas not the blood-haze killed him either. My love is dead, and ere long—or thus I overheard you say to Helga—likewise the child she tried to bear me.
Where is Oln Woeck?
”

Snow fell outside, quiet as a fall of feathers.

“Gone south. ’Tis rumored, to confer with other Brotherhoods. But Sedrich, vengeance—”

He raised what had been his right hand as if to stay her speech. This it did, with more effect than he’d anticipated. Realizing his nakedness once again, Sedrich slipped an armhole of his vest over his bandage. The wound had stopped bleeding. Never taking his eyes from his mother, he tucked the clout between his legs, awkward as he fastened the belt about his waist.

“And Hethri Parcifal,” he asked, “Where is our
good
neighbor?”