Armored men, on horseback.
There were only four of them, but they came so relentlessly, their chargers galloping with such strength and determination, that his elation vanished beneath a wave of tremulous panic. Their armor gleamed, their faces were covered with blank masks of shining steel, and the crests on their chests appeared to be fiery roses.
The quartet split—the two on the right angling toward his approaching Torguud, the others thundering toward him. He lashed the pony mercilessly, trying to make it run faster, but he could feel it laboring heavily beneath him already.
Behind him, stragglers of his hunting party emerged from the woods, and they rapidly overtook his lumbering pony, reaching him a few scant moments before the two armored riders did. Metal clashed, a horse screamed, and two of his men were down. The armored riders surged through his paltry host, wheeling their mounts about for another charge. A Darkhat fired an arrow at one of the two attackers, but it skipped off the man’s helm without causing him any harm.
An armored rider came at him, and Ögedei fumbled for his sword, his fingers slipping off the hilt. The charger’s hooves pounded against the ground, and he could hear its heavy breathing. He finally got his hand on his hilt, pulled the sword halfway, and realized he wasn’t going to get it free in time.
He looked up, deciding he would rather see his death coming, and was suddenly buffeted as another horse and rider passed between him and the approaching rider. The armored man’s horse wheeled, nearly throwing its rider, and Namkhai, suddenly between him and his death, battered at the armored man with the long pole of the Spirit Banner.
Namkhai swept the banner around again, and the armored man hesitated for a second. Ögedei could not fathom why the man faltered. Had he felt the power of the banner? Had he seen the endless sea of horses that lived within the banner? Did he realize how pointless his efforts were? The empire was endless. It would run from horizon to horizon, from mountain to sea. It could not be stopped.
“Ride!” Namkhai screamed at him, startling him out of the ecstatic fervor that had suddenly gripped him. Namkhai hit the rider one last time with the banner, knocking him out of his saddle, and then his Torguud protector was reaching for him. Ögedei let go of the pony’s reins and swung his right leg out of the way as Namkhai brought his horse closer. He leaned over, grabbing a fistful of Namkhai’s trousers, and with a grunt he pushed off from the pony’s saddle. He floated through empty space for an instant, and he was certain he had mistimed his leap, and then the back of Namkhai’s horse slammed against his thighs. He snaked his arm around Namkhai’s waist as the horse, now carrying twice the weight, stumbled briefly before finding its balance again.
Screaming a wordless battle cry as if he dared any man or spirit to stand before him, Namkhai urged his horse to run harder. The ground flashed beneath them, and Ögedei buried his face against Namkhai’s broad chest, hanging on for dear life.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
The Strong Heart
Orsini strode toward the waiting room. He was agitated by Cardinal Fieschi’s messenger, and while he had immediately sent the captain of his guard off to mobilize his men, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was chasing a wild horse that would never be tamed. Fieschi had made promises, and at first it seemed that the Cardinal might actually be able to produce the results he said he could, but in the last few days, Orsini was beginning to doubt that the Cardinal had the situation under control. And if the Cardinal wasn’t running things, who was?
A priest waited at the door, and when Orsini nodded, he pulled the bolt back and opened the door for the Senator. Orsini took a deep breath and assumed his most imposing attitude—shoulders back, gut forward, forehead glowering—as he entered the room.
The woman stood across from the door, quietly dignified, arms folded across her chest. She gave him such a look of knowing expectation that he almost stumbled, even though the floor was smooth and even. The muscles in his legs twitched, an autonomic response to an instinctual nervousness.
“Senator,” she said.
Orsini tried to regain his swagger. “Lady,” he replied, not quite mocking and yet still respectful. He stopped just inside the door, a wider stance than felt quite natural. He mirrored her, mockingly, by crossing his arms across his chest.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” she said. “I am Léna, recently of the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, though I am not bound to his court.”
Orsini sneered, catching the inflection of her words. “You are one of them,” he said. “A Binder.”
“I am,” Léna replied. “And I have come to ask of my sisters who live in Rome.”
Orsini dismissed the sneer from his lips. “What of them?” he shrugged.
“You are the Senator of Rome,” Léna reminded him. “You don’t know your city well enough to know what has happened to my kin-sisters? Or is there a different excuse you would like to offer?”
“I don’t have to offer you anything,” Orsini snapped. “You are an agent of the Holy Roman Emperor, and given his recent attitude toward Rome and the surrounding cities, he has almost declared himself a true enemy of the people.”
“Almost,” Léna said, emphasizing only one of his words. “The resolution of that question may hinge on your answer.”
Orsini chewed on his lower lip, gauging the woman before him. Was she bluffing? Would Frederick dare invade Rome simply to find out what had happened to a few witches, none of whom would truly be missed.
“The Cardinals have elected a new Pope,” she said, changing the subject when it was clear he wasn’t going to answer her question.
“A new Pope,” Orsini said. “Yes, I know. They finally chose one yesterday.”
She shook her head. “No, earlier this morning. Castiglione is their chosen man.”
Orsini glowered a little longer at the woman, and when she was unmoved by his best impression of his namesake, he relented. “Of course he is,” Orsini sighed, wondering how this disaster could have happened. What happened to the crazy priest that would have been so pliable? he wondered, and then his stomach tightened with doubt. Had this been Fieschi’s game all along?
“He has taken the name Celestine IV,” Léna continued.
“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” Orsini asked, tiring of this woman. “That Castiglione has been elected Pope? What does this matter to me?”
“It matters a great deal,” Léna said with a smile, and Orsini found himself disliking her smile. “My sisters,” she repeated. “Where are they?”
“You don’t belong here,” he snarled at her. “You are a spy for the Holy Roman Emperor. You are an agitator and a witch. I am going to call for my guards. You can join your—” He caught himself, barely in time.
“Ah,” Léna said. “They are still alive. Well, that is fortuitous news.”
Orsini waved his hand at her, no longer interested in hearing what she had to say. At the very least, he thought as he turned away to call for the guard, I can ransom her back to Frederick.
“Senator Matteo Rosso Orsini,” Léna commanded. He found himself stopping and turning back to face her, against his better judgment.
She put her closed hand over her heart. “Senator Orsini,” she said. “I am bound to you with a message from Pope Celestine IV.”
“What nonsense is this?” he demanded, striding toward her. Intending to shut her up—forcefully, if necessary.
“The Pope wishes to inform you that his first act as Pope is to express his displeasure at the treatment of the Cardinals in the Septizodium by ordering that you be excommunicated from the Holy Roman Church.”
She smiled as she finished. Orsini tried to speak, but found he could not even open his mouth. An oak plank smashing him on the head would not have left him more stupefied than this.
Léna, after a polite pause, announced, “Thus delivered of my message, I am like the wind, unbound here but bound elsewhere.”
She paused again, but he could do nothing more tha
n stare at her, stunned. Excommunicated...
“I would expect that the Pope might reconsider his order,” she said pleasantly as she started to walk toward him, “if you were to demonstrate some contrition for your acts of heinous torture against the citizens of Rome. Since the Cardinals are no longer imprisoned in the Septizodium, perhaps you might think of some other poor souls who have been wrongly imprisoned.”
She stopped and looked up at him. “Now, do you remember what happened to my kin-sisters?” she asked.
He found himself nodding dumbly.
“Good,” she said. “I look forward to hearing news of their release. I might even be inclined to beg clemency from His Holiness on your behalf.”
God believes your heart is strong enough.
At first, there had only been tiny pinpricks of light, shards of sun that dazzled as they fell on the leaves. But when they reached the vale of endless tents, the light had grown stronger. When Rodrigo glanced through the open flaps of tents, thinking he would see nothing but shadows, all he saw were glowing faces. Cherubic angels peering out at him, their rotund moon faces swollen with honey-sticky joy. And when he met the Emperor, the man who spoke with the voice of a black bird, he could no longer bear to raise his eyes toward the sky. Even though there was a heavy canvas tent over his head, he could still see the fiery explosions of God’s spinning eyes.
As he grabbed the cup, all the light went away. It was as if there was a vast hole in the bottom of the vessel, a sucking abyss that began to inhale deeply as he squeezed the metal stem in his hand. He could see the light streaming toward the cup. It flowed across the table like water running uphill; it dribbled out of Ferenc’s eyes in fat, squirming tears; it fell from the sparkling wheels in the sky in sheets of fiery rain. The cup continued to inhale, seemingly unperturbed by the quantity of light it was consuming, until there was nothing left but shadows.
In the resonant darkness, the black bird kept shrieking, and Rodrigo heard answering calls, the echoes of all the crows and vultures from the battlefield. Each voice splintered into tinier voices, like the cries of lost children—the orphans of Mohi, of Legnica, of every city the Mongol horde had destroyed in its relentless quest to trample the world.
Make them stop! he pleaded with the darkness. Give them peace. Embrace them. But if God was in the darkness, he did not respond to Rodrigo’s prayer. The priest teetered on the edge of the abyss, the one that had nearly consumed him once before, buffeted by the screams and cries of all the dead birds.
His feet slipped, but he did not plummet into the empty vastness. He hung, dangling over the abyss, one hand wrapped tightly around the stem of the cup, and it did not move. Grunting and straining, he reached up and put both hands on it.
He remembered everything perfectly: his catechisms from the seminary, the holy words of God writ in the Bible, the insights gleaned from Brother Albertus, the last benediction from the Archbishop before the armies of the West were devastated on the plain near Mohi, the words spoken to him by the fair-haired angel at the farm. Signa hodie lumen vultus tui super me... It was only through arduous reflection upon everything he could recall that he could understand God. That he could understand his place in God’s design.
There was still a glimmer of light in the cup. Every muscle in his body groaned as he raised himself so that he could sip from the floating cup. He put his lips against the warm metal, and as his flesh made contact with the Grail, it tipped toward him. A golden streak of light flowed into his open mouth, and he drank it eagerly, accepting it into his body, into his soul.
When he exploded, he knew he was the exultation of light that he had seen in his vision. The endless wheels within wheels were his existence, shattered and strewn throughout the profusion of possibilities, destinies, histories, implications, and connections. He whirled, each particle of his being shivering with an ecstatic thrill. He saw everything and heard nothing.
As the wheels began to slow, as his being began to coalesce once more, he started to weep.
He could see cracks in the vessel, and even with all this light and warmth, the cracks could not be healed...
Father Rodrigo struggled in Ferenc’s grip. “What are you doing, boy?” the priest screamed. His eyes were wild and his face was pale with blotches of red—the same sort of coloration that Ferenc had seen during more than one of the priest’s feverish fits. “She wants to steal the Grail. She’s a child of Satan.”
He didn’t believe what Father Rodrigo was saying—he couldn’t—and he felt more strongly the fear he had been trying to push away. He had seen the priest become lost in his fever fogs before, but never like this. Never with such little warning.
Without taking his eyes off Father Rodrigo, Ferenc listened to the sounds of movement behind him: Ocyrhoe’s ragged breathing; her hands and knees moving across the rough ground; the sound of cloth scraping against the same. Father Rodrigo thrust out an arm, pointing over Ferenc’s shoulder, and he heard Ocyrhoe’s horse spook with a deep snort.
“Stop her!” Father Rodrigo shrieked.
“Father,” Ferenc said, gently taking the priest’s outstretched hand with both of his and pulling it toward his heart. “Look away. Calm yourself. I beg you. She is not your enemy. She only wants to help. I want to help.” He squeezed the priest’s fingers.
Father Rodrigo shoved Ferenc sharply, and he staggered backward and barely caught himself from falling. “Open your eyes, boy! Domine, oculos habet, et non videbut.” His eyes were frighteningly bright and large, and he pulled his hand free of Ferenc’s grip. Shivering with rage, he grabbed Ferenc’s shoulders and spun the boy around. “I have seen her in my visions, and she is all that stands between me and our salvation. Look!”
Ocyrhoe dashed across the road, her legs at awkward angles as if each wanted to flee in a different direction. She clutched both the cup and the priest’s satchel against her chest.
With a roar, Father Rodrigo released Ferenc and threw himself at the fleeing girl, his hands grasping and clawing. Ferenc saw her, in her confusion and terror, grab the satchel even tighter to herself rather than attempt to avoid his outstretched hands. Father Rodrigo grabbed Ocyrhoe by the hair, yanking her to a stop. She cried out, struggling in his grip, and Ferenc flinched as she wrenched herself free, leaving a fistful of hair in Father Rodrigo’s grip.
Ferenc shook himself free of the fear that was paralyzing him and sprang after Father Rodrigo. The priest heard him coming this time, shook him off as he tried to wrap his arms around the mad priest. Father Rodrigo threw an elbow back, catching Ferenc on the bridge of the nose, and Ferenc tried to blink away the flood of tears that sprang into his eyes.
The priest lunged after Ocyrhoe again, grabbing at her neck and shoulders this time. As he found his grip, he squeezed and lifted her so that she was poised on her toes. Her face was very red, and her hands flew to her throat, trying to pry loose his grip.
“Father, stop,” Ferenc hissed. He grabbed Father Rodrigo’s arm and pulled, but it was like trying to pull a full-grown tree out of the ground. He slapped Father Rodrigo, but the priest ignored him. Ocyrhoe sputtered and choked. She had dropped both the satchel and the cup, and her tiny hands beat ineffectively at Father Rodrigo’s arms.
Ferenc looked at Father Rodrigo’s eyes and saw no sign of the priest he once knew.
He stood on his toes, and wrapped his right arm around the priest’s head and face. “I have to do this,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.” With his left arm folding in against his own chest, he grabbed Father Rodrigo’s right ear in his left hand.
The priest’s body tightened against his, dumbly realizing something was amiss. His hands stopped tightening, but he did not release Ocyrhoe.
Having gotten the man’s attention, Ferenc carefully pulled a little with his right arm as he pushed with his left, forcing Father Rodrigo’s head deosil enough to be uncomfortable. A nervous cry slipped from the priest’s mouth, almost as loud as Ocyrhoe’s rasping gasps for air, and Ferenc found himself a
lmost unable to maintain his grip. He had heard the sound before when Father Rodrigo had moments of lucidity during his bouts of fever madness.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ferenc saw Ocyrhoe’s frightened face and her mouth, opening and closing like that of a fish pulled out of the water. He felt the muscles in his arms tremble, and he tightened his embrace. He had to be strong.
“Release her,” he said, his arms firm. “She is an innocent girl. When you wake from this madness, you will know yourself again. You will never forgive yourself if you do not let her go.” His heart hammered in his chest, and he silently prayed that the part of Father Rodrigo that he had just heard cry out could hear him.
When he had hunted in the woods outside of Buda, he had, on occasion, needed to mercifully end the life of a wounded animal.
Don’t make me do this, he pleaded silently.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Pursuit
Raphael caught the Mongol’s sword on his shield, and as his horse thundered past, he pushed his shield down and swung his sword in a heavy chopping motion. It bit through leather and flesh, tugging as it caught on bone, and then his opponent was behind him. Another Mongol rider was galloping past on his right, and he angled his horse after the man. He passed behind the other’s horse, and the Mongol twisted adroitly in his saddle, loosing an arrow at close range. He pulled his upper body down toward his gut, tightening in his saddle in an effort to hide behind his shield. The arrow smacked hard into his shield, breaching its surface and protruding a few inches out the other side. He rose out of his crouch, swinging his sword, and the Mongol spun away, blood rising in a plume.