“Chasing the Grail,” said Archer softly.
“You are the second man to mention this grail. I hope you are not friends.”
“Who was the first?”
“Abaddon.”
Archer stopped walking and turned toward Shannow. “You have met the Satanlord?”
“In a dream. He taunted me with Galahad.”
“Do not let it concern you, Mr. Shannow. There are worse things to be than a knight in search of the truth. I would imagine Abaddon envies you.”
“There is little to envy.”
“If that were really true, I would not have sought you out, nor would Ruth have asked me to.”
“I could not see the buildings of Sanctuary.”
“Nor I,” said Archer ruefully. “There is great power there … awesome. Ruth can turn energy to matter—and without a stone. I sometimes think she is on the verge of immortality.”
“How did she become so powerful?” asked Shannow.
“She claims, and I have no reason to doubt her, that the clue is in the Bible. Non-use of power makes you stronger.”
“In what way?”
“It’s hard to explain, but it goes something like this: If a man strikes you on the right cheek, your desire is to strike back. Marshaling that desire and holding it in check makes you stronger.
“Think of it in these terms: You have an empty jug. Each time you get angry or feel violent or emotional, the jug gains water. If you vent your anger, the water disappears. The more you control your feelings, the more full the jug. When the jug is full, you have power—all the power you did not use when you first felt the need to strike back. Ruth is very old and has been practicing this art for many years. Her jug is now like a lake.”
“But you do not quite believe it?” said Shannow.
“Yes and no. I think she has a strong point, but these are the Plague Lands, Mr. Shannow, and much happens here that defies rational explanation. This area was once a dumping ground for chemical weapons, weapons so deadly that they were sealed in drums and dropped from the decks of ships to harbor their venom on the bottom of the ocean. Added to this, during the Fall there was a great deal of radiation—like a plague, Mr. Shannow—which killed whomever it touched. The land was polluted beyond anything you could imagine. It still is. Where we now sit the radiation level is a hundred times greater than that which would have killed a strong man before the Fall; this in itself has caused mutations in people and animals. There are more ESPers per head of the population than ever there were in the old days. Far to the east there are tribes of people with webbed hands and feet. To the north there is a people who are covered in hair; their heads are long and wolflike. There are even tales of people with wings, but these I have never seen.
“I think Ruth has discovered part of the truth, but her talents have been vastly enhanced by the Plague Lands.
“You mentioned a library. She probably created it just for you—out of thick air, reassembling molecules to the shape of that which she desired.”
Shannow sat silent for a moment, then he said, “God has very little place in your thinking, Mr. Archer.”
“I have no idea what God is. The Bible says he created everything, and that includes the Devil. A big mistake! Then he created man—a bigger mistake. I can’t follow someone who makes errors on such a colossal scale.”
“Yet Ruth, with all her power and knowledge, believes,” said Shannow.
“Ruth is almost on the verge of creating a god,” responded Archer.
“To me that is blasphemy.”
“Then forgive me, Mr. Shannow, and put it down to ignorance.”
“You are not an ignorant man, Mr. Archer, and I do not think you are an evil one. Good night to you.”
Archer watched the Jerusalem Man walk back to the palace, then sat back and let his eyes roam the star-filled sky. Ruth had told him that Shannow was a haunted man, and Archer felt the truth of her diagnosis.
Less of a Galahad than a Lancelot, thought Archer. A flawed knight in a flawed world, unstable yet unyielding.
“Good night, Shannow,” whispered Archer. “I find no evil in you, either.”
Ruth’s image flickered in front of him, forming into flesh as she sat beside him.
“Stones into cakes, indeed! You are incorrigible, Samuel.”
He grinned. “Did you divert the Zealots?”
“Yes. They are riding west, with Shannow and Batik just in sight.”
“You were right, Ruth. He is a good man.”
“He is strong in the broken places,” said Ruth. “I like him. How is Amaziga?”
“Well, but she nags me constantly.”
“You’re a man who needs a strong wife. And how is life at the Ark?”
“You should visit and see for yourself.”
“No, I do not like Sarento—no, don’t tell me again what a good administrator he is. You like him because he shares your fascination for the dead cities.”
Archer spread his hands. “Admit it. You would like to see the home of the Guardians.”
“Perhaps. Will you take Shannow to Sarento?”
“Probably. Why is he important to you?”
“I can’t say, Sam—not won’t, can’t. The Hellborn are moving, death is in the air, and the Jerusalem Man sits in the eye of the hurricane.”
“You think he plans to kill Abaddon?”
“Yes.”
“Not a bad thing for the world, surely.”
“Perhaps, but I sense there are wolves in the shadows, Sam. Keep Shannow safe for me.”
She smiled, touched his arm in farewell …
And vanished.
* * *
The Hellborn invasion of the southlands began on the first day of spring when a thousand riders swept into Rivervale, killing and burning. Ash Burry was captured at his farm and crucified on an oak tree. Hundreds of other families were slain, and refugees took to the hills, where the Hellborn riders hunted them down.
And the army continued ever south.
Forty miles from Rivervale, in the foothills of the Yeager mountains, a small band of men gathered in a sheltered hollow, listening to the tale of a refugee who had lost his whole family. The listeners were tough brutal men, long used to the ways of brigandry, but they listened in growing horror to the stories of butchery, rape, and naked blood lust.
Their leader, a thin, almost skeletal man, sat on a rock, his gray eyes unblinking, his face emotionless.
“You say that they have rifles that fire many times?”
“Yes, and pistols, too,” replied the refugee, an aging farmer.
“What should we do, Daniel?” asked a youth with sandy hair.
“I need to think, Peck. They’re doing us out of our trade, and that’s not right—not by a long haul. I thought we was doing all right what with the three new muskets and the five pistols Gambion brought back. But repeating rifles …”
Peck pushed his hair from his eyes and scratched at a flea moving inside his stained buckskin shirt. “We could get ourselves some of them guns, Daniel.”
“The boy’s right,” put in Gambion, a huge misshapen bear of a man who was heavily bearded and bald as a coot. He had been with Daniel Cade for seven years and was a known man with knife or gun. “We could hit them Hellborn damn hard, gather ourselves some weapons.”
“It may be true,” said Cade, “but this problem is a little larger than just getting guns. We survive off the land, and we spend our Barta coin in towns that don’t know us. These Hellborn are killing off the farmers and merchants and burning the towns. There will be nothing left for us.”
“We can’t take on an army, Dan,” said Gambion. “There ain’t but seventy men among us.”
“You can count me in,” said the farmer. “By God, you can count me in!”
Cade pushed himself to his feet. He was a tall man, and his left leg was permanently straight and heavily strapped at the knee with tight leather. He ran his hand through his thick black hair and then spit
on the grass.
“Gambion, take ten men and scour the countryside. Any survivors you come across, direct them to Yeager. If you find a group that don’t know the mountains, escort them in.”
“Men and women?”
“Men, women, children—whatever.”
“Why, Daniel? There’s not enough food for our own selves.”
Cade ignored him. “Peck, you take a dozen men and round up any stray stock—horses, cattle, sheep, goats; there’s bound to be plenty. Drive them back into the Sweetwater canyon and set a pen across the entrance. There’s good grass there. And I don’t want any of you tackling the Hellborn. First sign of the bastards and you run for it. Understand?”
Both men nodded and Gambion made to speak, but Cade lifted his hand.
“No more questions. Move!”
Cade limped across the hollow to where Sebastian sat. He was a short, sallow-faced youth barely nineteen years old but a scout more skilled than any Yeager mountain man.
“Take a good horse and get behind the Hellborn. They must have supplies coming in, ammunition and the like. Find me the route.”
Cade turned and twisted his knee. He bit back an angry oath and gritted his teeth against the blinding pain. Two years had passed since the incident, and there had not been a day during that time when the agony had been less than tolerable.
He could still recall with crystal clarity the morning when he, Gambion, and five others had ridden into the market town of Allion to see a lone figure standing in the dusty main street.
“You are not wanted here, Cade,” the man had told him. Cade had blinked and leaned forward to study the speaker. He had been tall, with shoulder-length graying hair and piercing eyes that looked right through a man.
“Jonathan? Is it you?”
“Hell, Daniel,” said Gambion, “that’s the Jerusalem Man.”
“Jonnie?”
“I have nothing to say to you, Daniel,” said Shannow. “Ride from here. Go to hell, where you belong.”
“Do not judge me, little brother. You have no right.”
Before Shannow could reply, a youngster riding with Cade—a foolish boy named Rabbon—pulled a flintlock from his belt and cocked it. Shannow shot him from the saddle, and the main street became a bedlam of rearing horses and gunshots, screaming men and the cries of the dying. A stray shot smashed Cade’s knee, and Gambion, wounded in the arm, grabbed the reins of Cade’s horse and galloped clear. Behind them lay five dead or dying men.
Three weeks later the good people of Allion had sent Shannow packing, and Cade had returned with all his men. By heaven, they had paid for his knee!
He had not seen his brother since that painful day, but one day they would meet again, and meanwhile Cade dreamed of the sweetness of revenge.
Lisa, his woman, moved alongside him. She was a thin, hollow-eyed farm girl Cade had taken two years before. Normally he discarded his women within weeks, but there was something about Lisa that compelled him to keep her, some inner harmony that brought peace to Cade’s bitter heart. She would cock her head to one side and smile at him; then all his aggression and violence would fade and he would take her hand, and they would sit together, secure in each other’s company. The single undeniable fact of Cade’s nomadic life was that Lisa loved him. He did not know why, and he cared less. The fact was enough.
“Why are you doing this, Daniel?” she asked, leading him to their cabin and sitting alongside him on the leather-covered bench he had made the previous autumn.
“Doing what?” he hedged.
“Bringing refugees into Yeager.”
“You think I shouldn’t?”
“No; I think it is a good thing to save lives. But I wondered why.”
“Why a brigand wolf should lead the lambs into his den?”
“Yes.”
“You rule out the milk of human kindness?”
She kissed his cheek and tilted her head and smiled.
“I know you have a kind side, Daniel, but I also know you are a cunning man. What do you see in this for you?”
“The Hellborn are destroying the land, and they will leave no place for me. But if I oppose them alone, they will crush me. So I need an army.”
“An army of lambs?” she asked, giggling.
“An army of lambs,” he conceded. “But bear in mind that the reason the brigands prosper is that the farmers can never link together to oppose us. There are brave men among them—skillful men, tough men. Together I can make them a force to be reckoned with.”
“But what do you get out of this?”
“If I lose … nothing. If I win? I get the world, Lisa. I will be the savior. Ever thought of being a queen?”
“They’ll never stand for it,” she said. “As soon as the battle is over, they’ll remember what you were and turn on you.”
“We shall see, but from now on there will be a new Daniel Cade, a caring, kind, understanding leader of men. The Hellborn have given me the chance, and damned if I’m not grateful to them.”
“But they’ll come after you with all their terrible weapons.”
“True, little Lisa, but they have to come up the Franklin Pass, and a child could hold that with a catapult.”
“Do you really think it will be that easy?”
“No, Lisa,” he said, suddenly serious. “It will be the biggest gamble of my life. But then, my men are always telling me they would follow me into hell. Now’s their chance to prove it!”
Shannow could not sleep. He lay back with his head on his saddle, his body warm in the blankets, but images flashed and swirled in his mind: Donna Taybard, Ruth and the library, Archer and his ghosts, but most of all Abaddon.
It had been an easy threat to utter, but this was not some brigand chief hiding in a mountain lair. This was a general, a king, a man who could command an army of thousands.
Donna had asked him once how he had the nerve to face a group of men, and he had told her the simple truth: Take out the leader and nullify the followers. But could that hold true in this case?
Babylon was some six weeks ride to the southwest. Walpurnacht, according to Batik, was less than a month away. He could not save Donna, as he had not been able to save Curopet.
All he could exact was vengeance. And for what?
His eyes burned with weariness, and he closed them, but still sleep would not come. He felt burdened by the size of the task ahead. At last he fell into a fitful sleep.
He dreamed he walked on a green hill, beneath a warm sun, where he could hear the sea lapping on an unseen shore and the sound of horses running over grass. He sat beneath a spreading oak and closed his eyes.
“Welcome, stranger,” said a voice.
Shannow opened his eyes to see a tall man sitting cross-legged in front of him. He was bearded and wore his shoulder-length hair in three braids; his eyes were sky-blue, his face strong.
“Who are you?”
“Pendarric. And you are Shannow the questor.”
“How is it you know me?”
“Why should I not? I know all who dwell in my palace.”
The man was wearing a light blue tunic and a thick cloth belt braided with gold thread. By his side hung a short sword with an ornate hilt, and the pommel was a Daniel Stone the size of an apple.
“Are you a ghost?”
“An interesting point for discussion,” said Pendarric. “I am as I always was, whereas you are not truly here. So who is the ghost?”
“This is a dream—Archer and his games.”
“Perhaps.” The man drew his sword and thrust it into the ground. “Take a long look, Shannow. Be sure you will recognize it again.”
“Why?”
“Call it a game. But when you see it, in whatever form, reach out for it and it will be there.”
“I am no swordsman.”
“No, but you have a heart. And you are Rolynd.”
“No, I am not one of your people.”
Pendarric smiled. “The Rolynd is not a race, Sh
annow; it is a state of being. Your friend Archer has it wrong. A man cannot be born Rolynd or even become Rolynd. It is what he is or what he is not.
“It is an apartness, a loneliness, a talent. You have not survived this far on skill alone; that within you guides you. You have a sense for danger that you call instinct, but it is far more. Trust it … and remember the sword.”
“You think I can win?”
“No. What I am telling you is that you are not merely a lone warrior set against an impossible enemy. You are Rolynd, and that is more important than winning.”
“Are you also Rolynd?”
“No, Shannow, though my father was. Had I been so lucky, my people would not have died so terribly. I killed them all. And that is why I brought you here. No one understands the power of the Sipstrassi. It can heal, and it can kill. But in the main it enhances, transmutes dreams to reality. You wish to heal the sick? The Sipstrassi will do it until its power is no more. You wish to kill, and the stone will do that, too. But here there is a terrible power, for the stone will feed on death and grow in strength. It will gnaw the soul of the wielder, enhancing his evil. In the end …? My people could tell you about the end, Shannow. The world almost died. We ripped apart the fabric of time and buried our world under an ocean. Tragic as that was, there was one great virtue: the Sipstrassi was buried, too. But now it has returned, and the terror waits.”
“Are you saying the world will fall again?”
“Within a year.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Have you not heard my words? I caused it once. I conquered the world; I built an empire across the center of the lands, from Xechotl to Greece. I opened the gateways of the universe and gave your people the myths they carry to this day: dragons and trolls, demons and Gorgons. What man can imagine, the Sipstrassi will create. But there is a balance to nature that must not be changed. I tore the thread that held the world.”
Shannow saw the anguish in Pendarric’s face. “I cannot stop the spread of evil. I can only kill Abaddon. He will be replaced, and I cannot change the fate of the world.”
“Remember the sword, Shannow.”