The Gathering Storm

  “Oh, God!” Heribert hurried toward her, unsteady enough on the rocking ship that he careened into one of the sailors.

  “No matter,” called Sanglant after him, laughing. “She’ll either fall and kill herself, or she won’t.”

  But it quickly became clear that the captain of the ship wished no brat getting in the way, and soon enough Sanglant found himself presiding over his sullen daughter at the bow of the ship.

  “On this boat, you obey the captain, who is like the regnant.”

  “He’s only a common man, Papa.”

  “In your first battle, will you tell Captain Fulk he’s wrong when he gives you advice just because he was born the son of a steward and you are a prince’s daughter? A wise ruler knows how to listen to those who may know something she does not, and seeks out advisers who tell her the truth rather than those who simply flatter.”

  Ai, God, she was well grown enough to pout, arms crossed and shoulders hunched as she stared at the river. Here, as forest gave way to marsh, a heron took wing, slow flaps along the shallows until it was lost in the haze that clung to the waters. Would her life pass as swiftly as the bird’s flight? Would she become an old woman before he reached thirty? He could not bear to think of losing her in such an unnatural way, having to watch as age captured her and made her its prisoner. How soon would she flower and be ready to wed? She still had a child’s body, all innocent grace and coltish limbs, as lively and strong as any creature let run free. Thank the Lady she was not yet showing signs of the woman she would become; the longer he could put off such considerations the better. Yet he would have to choose carefully what man she married, because she would need every advantage when it came time to restore to her what was due her: her birthright as a descendant of the Emperor Taillefer.

  In such moments, watching her, he despaired. She had much the look of Liath about her, delicate features, that creamy brown complexion, and unexpectedly blue eyes, but she had the night-black hair of the Aoi and a cast of features that reminded him of his own mother. The older she grew, the more the resemblance sharpened. By appearance alone, no one would take her for Taillefer’s heir; she had not the look of the west at all. Maybe there was something of Henry in her—she had his rages, after all, and his generous ability to forgive—but as hard as ever he looked he could see no resemblance to Anne, not one bit. That made him glad.

  She had such a fierce expression of affronted ire on her sweet face that he almost laughed, but he knew better than to laugh at her. She struggled, lower lip thrust out and quivering, a tear welling from one eye to slide down a cheek. Heribert moved forward to console her, but Sanglant checked him with a gesture. Anna, Thiemo, and Matto, standing alertly nearby, knew better than to intervene when he had laid down a punishment.

  “Papa,” she said finally, gaze still stubbornly fixed downriver. The prow of the ship cut the current to either side as the oars pulled them on and the current pressed them forward. Ahead, the gray-green waters purled around a snag that thrust up out of the water. “I would listen to Captain Fulk. I would. When can I start training to arms?”

  “You’re too young—” he began, the old refrain, then broke off. Why deny what was obvious to any fool traveling with his army, of whom he was obviously the chief example? He had himself been sent at the age of seven to begin his training. Six months ago she had been too young, but for Blessing a few months was like to a year for any normal person. If he did not start training her now, it might be too late, she might be grown and past her prime before she had a chance to prove herself. If she were doomed to a brief life, at least he must try to give to her all that he could, including her heart’s wish: to be a soldier like her father.

  “Look!” she shrieked as a cry rose from the warship running before them, the vanguard of their fleet.

  The spar had grown to reveal itself as the topmost ruins of an ancient tower, now drowned in the shallows of the river by rising waters and a change in the river’s course. Like all earthly power, the fortification had fallen in the end, its builders and queens long forgotten. But in the eddy where the river parted around that base of crumbling stone, something waited and watched. Shouts shattered the silence as other oarsmen and sailors saw what lashed in the murky water. Their cries rang out with fear and horror. Yet there it floated, a creature from nightmare, more fish than man with flat red eyes, a lipless mouth, and no nose, only slits for breathing. Each strand of its writhing hair was as thick as an eel with beady little eyes and a snapping mouth.

  “Lord save us,” murmured Heribert, clinging to the rail: He had gone white.

  Thiemo cursed and drew the Circle of Unity at his breast, and Matto grabbed Anna as though to shield her from the sight of that ghastly thing, but she shook him off, shaking and stuttering as she gaped.

  “Look, Papa!” cried Blessing, as blissful as a child who sees the first snow of winter swirling down to the ground. “It’s a man-fish! I want to swim with it!”

  He grabbed hold of her as they shot past, the current pouring them through a narrowing funnel between high bluffs. Yet it seemed for a long while after that he could hear the cries and alarmed shouts behind them as the other ships passed, one by one.

  “What does it portend?” demanded the captain of the ship, his words translated by Brother Breschius. “An evil thing, to see one of the sea brothers swimming up the river.”

  “Have they a name?” asked Sanglant.

  “Nay, my lord prince. My grandfather spoke of them, for he was a ship-master as well. He said they were just a legend.” He gestured, spitting on the deck and stamping his left foot, then recalled where he was and before whom he stood, and hastily drew the Circle of Unity at his chest as would any God-fearing man. “An evil omen, my lord prince.”

  “Perhaps. Did your grandfather say whether such creatures had intelligence, or whether they were only dumb beasts?”

  “They have cunning, my lord prince, and hunger. It was always said they would eat any man who fell overboard.”

  “Yet did your grandfather or any man who sailed with him ever see such a man-fish?”

  “Nay. They had only heard tales.”

  Tales aplenty ran round their camp that evening when they lay up alongside the shore for the night in a stretch of marshy wilderness teeming with birds. From the deck Sanglant could see five ships, one ahead and four behind, as well as a few fires burning on the strand upriver, but only the foolhardy or the thick-skinned ventured to shore, where gnats and stinging flies swarmed. It was, if anything, hotter and stickier than it had been earlier in the day.

  When Captain Fulk rowed back from the foremost galley and Bertha, Wichman, Druthmar, and Istvan arrived from up-river, rather fly-bitten, he called a council. Many old tales came to light but only after he had gone round his council to hear what each member had to say did he see Zacharias standing at the back of the gathering between Hathui and Wolfhere. The frater’s expression gave Sanglant pause.

  “Have you something to say, Brother Zacharias?”

  The frater stammered out a meaningless denial. “N-n-no, my lord prince. N-nothing.”

  “Have you ever seen such a creature yourself?”

  The hesitation betrayed him.

  “Tell me,” he commanded.

  Hathui bent closer to her brother and said a few words into his ear, too quietly even for Sanglant to hear above the whispering of the folk around him and the lap of water against the ship’s hull. The wind brought the smell of the marsh, heavy with decay.

  “It was a dream, my lord prince, a vision. You know that I traveled for a time with your mother, who took me to a place she called the Palace of Coils.”

  “The spiral gate!” muttered Wolfhere, but Zacharias paid him no heed as he went on.

  “There I saw many visions, but it also seemed to me that for a short time I became such a creature as we saw today. I swam with my fellows, out in the salt sea, following a fleet of ships.”

  Zacharias shuddered. “That’s all.”
>
  He was lying; there was more, but Sanglant doubted he could coax it out of him. Perhaps Hathui could.

  “That is all?”

  “First we hear tales of a phoenix and now we see a merman,” remarked Lady Bertha with pleasure. Strife and difficulty amused her.

  “It was damned ugly,” said Wichman. “I thought mermaids had great milky breasts huge enough to smother a man. This was a nasty fiend!”

  Bertha smiled. “It’s said that in the end times all the ancient creatures of legend will crawl out of their hiding places to stalk the earth once again.”

  “Now we shall see the truth of it,” said Sanglant, looking at Wolfhere as he spoke. The old Eagle made no reply as he crossed to the railing to stare at the scattering of fires along the shoreline.

  They returned to their places, but no man washed in the river water. No one knew how close in to shore the merfolk could swim. As he did every night, Sanglant gave orders to bring the chained Bulkezu up from the hold to take the night air, under guard. Only a few men were fit for the task, since Bulkezu might in the middle of the night taunt them in his soft voice, which was his only weapon, trying to make them angry enough to get within his reach.

  After Bulkezu was chained to the mast, Blessing crept up close to her father where he stood at the stem of the ship; she stared at the Quman chief. His chains clanked and rattled as he stretched, flexing his muscles, testing the limit and strength of the chains. Bulkezu never stopped testing those chains. He never despaired. Perhaps he was too crazy to do so. Perhaps he was too cunning, or too sane. It was the only way he had to keep up his strength.

  “I would rather be dead than a prisoner like that,” Blessing whispered, leaning against her father and wrapping her arms around his waist. Her head came almost to his chest. “Wouldn’t it be more merciful to kill him? He must hate you.”

  As I hated Bloodheart.

  “No prisoner loves his jailer,” he said at last.

  “Do you think if I’d jumped in the river that merman would have eaten me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The river flowed past, more sluggish now as it was glutted with waters leaking out of the marshland. A chorus of frogs chirped, then fell silent as though a passing owl had frightened them. There came a moment of deeper silence, with the flowing waters of the river and the steady lap of waves against the hull the only sound. A hard slap hit water out on the river, answered by a second and a third.

  “They’re talking,” said Blessing.

  “Who is talking?”

  “The merfolk.”

  “How can beasts talk?”

  “They do! They’re watching us.”

  He smiled, but an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades made him reluctant to laugh at her comment. “It’s too dark to see them.”

  “No, it isn’t. There are eleven of them. They travel in packs. Like dogs. They came to spy on us.”

  Was she just making up a fanciful story to amuse herself on the long journey? Or had she inherited an uncanny sense from the blood of her parents?

  “Is there more you can see that you haven’t told me?”

  “Well, I can see Mama sometimes.”

  The casual comment came like a jolt, like a man riding a placid gelding that suddenly bucks and bolts. He broke out in a sweat, skin tingling as if he were beset by a swarm of gnats. “What do you mean?”

  “Only sometimes. She’s still trapped in the burning stone. She’s trying to find her way back.”

  How difficult it was to keep his voice calm. “Is there anything we can do to help her?”

  She shrugged, painfully unconcerned. “We just have to wait. The merfolk are waiting, too, you know.”

  “What are they waiting for?”

  He could feel her concentration by the way her small body tensed against his. At the mast, chains scraped against wood as Bulkezu shifted position again. His guards—Malbert and Den tonight—chatted quietly with each other, reminiscing about a card game they’d lost to a pair of cheating Ungrian soldiers.

  “Oh!” said Blessing, sounding surprised and a little intrigued. “They’re waiting for revenge.”

  2

  AS the river broadened and grew sluggish winding its way through marshy wilderness, Zacharias spent more time on deck watching the riot of birds that flocked everywhere: ducks, egrets, storks, terns that skimmed along the flat sheet of the water, cormorants. Once, but only once, a gray crane. Hathui never moved far from his side unless she was called away by the prince. It seemed strange and terrible to him to stand beside his beloved younger sister in this companionable silence. He kept waiting for Hathui to come to her senses and repudiate him, but she never did.

  Instead, she questioned him about Sanglant’s retinue, their names and character. “And the three young folk who attend Princess Blessing? There’s trouble brewing there.”

  He glanced toward the bow where Anna stood between the two young men. Matto was shorter but broader through the shoulders, strong enough to wield an ax with deadly measure. Thiemo, half a head taller, still retained a whippet’s slenderness, but he had a cool head in most circumstances, a loyal heart, and a charming smile.

  Anna had changed markedly since that day in Gent when Sanglant had taken her into his retinue. She had bloomed.

  “True enough,” he said. “She was a scrawny thing when she first became Princess Blessing’s nurse.” Anna would never be truly pretty, but she had a quality of candor about her that made her as attractive as girls with unblemished complexions and handsomer features. She had also matured quite startlingly, with a voluptuous body that any sane man would crawl a hundred miles to worship.

  “They’re like dogs snarling over a bitch in heat. Doesn’t anyone else see it?”

  “What’s to be done? They’re young. They can’t help it.”

  “Poor girl,” she said disapprovingly, but her gaze was caught by a thicket of dense shrubs hugging the shoreline, branches brilliant with red berries. “Look at the hawthorn!” she cried with real passion.

  Briefly the land rose out of the mire, and poplars and willows took hold, leaves flashing as the wind disturbed them, before the ground leveled again into grassy banks that looked inviting but were more likely sodden, swampy traps infested by the ubiquitous stinging flies. He scratched his chin, batting away a swarm of gnats; it was bad enough out on the water.

  “Hathui …” He wanted to speak, but he was too afraid.

  “Yes?” When he did not reply, she went on. “Did you mean to say something?”

  “No, no. A strange country, this one. There aren’t many people living in these reaches. I admit I never thought a river could seem more like a marsh or a lake than a river.”

  “Yet there’s still a current that pulls us east. Have you seen the Heretic’s Sea?”

  “I have.”

  “What is it like?”

  “Filled with water.” Slavers had captured him within sight of those waters. “The shores are crawling with heretics and infidels. Thus the name.”

  “What do the heretics and infidels call the sea?”

  Surprised, he looked at her, but she was studying the shore, smiling as she watched sheep grazing on a spit of land watched over by a skinny boy and his companionable dog which ran to the edge of the water and barked enthusiastically, tail wagging. She kept her gaze on them until they were lost to sight and at last she said, “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  Nothing, he wanted to say sourly, but he was ashamed of his ill temper. “The infidels, who worship the Fire God whom they name Astareos, call it the Northern Sea, because it lies north of their own country. I don’t know what the Arethousans call it. Maybe they call it the Heretic’s Sea, too.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because they think we are heretics!” he said with a laugh, but Hathui stared at him.

  “How could they think we are heretics when we are the ones who worship God in Unity in the proper manner? The skopos is God’s deaco
n on Earth.” Her expression darkened as it always did when she thought of Darre, and Aosta, and the stricken king. “I pray we will find what we seek, and quickly.”

  “The grasslands are wide. Do not think it will be so easy to find anything on those trackless wastes, and especially not griffins and sorcerer women.”

  “Have you ever seen these Kerayit?”

  “I saw one of their war bands but I’ve never seen the cart of one of their sorcery women. Nor have I seen their masters, the Bwr people, the ones who were born half of humankind and half of a mare.”

  “Are there really such creatures?”

  The water slipped past, a mottled brown ripe with vegetation and dirt. “I have seen one in my dreams. I was never more frightened than at that moment.”

  “Never?” she asked softly.

  He flushed. “What do you mean?”

  “Never, Zacharias?”

  He said nothing, and when it was clear to her that he would not answer, she glanced toward the prince and spoke in a different tone, as if introducing a new subject. “What about the merfolk?”

  “Let it be, Hathui! I beg you. Let well enough alone.”

  But he had exasperated her, although it was the last thing he wanted. “You can never be content, can you?” she said. “That’s why you left the village, isn’t it? You can’t find peace.”

  “Peace was torn from me by Bulkezu! It’s his fault I can’t find peace!”

  “Nay. You won’t let yourself be at peace. You suffered. You did what you had to, to survive. I don’t blame you for that. We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of. But don’t think you can run away from the Enemy. The demons can’t give up their grip on you until you let them go.”

  He did not answer, and at last she let him be. For a long time they simply stood at the rail together, watching the shoreline slide past. It was a measure of peace. It was as much as he could ever hope for, that much and no more.

  3

  BY the next morning the grassy banks became overrun with reeds until all through the afternoon it seemed they sailed upon a brown ribbon cast through a green sea that stretched to the horizon on all sides. So many channels cut through the reeds that Anna marveled that the ship-master could navigate so unerringly along the main channel, if there even was one anymore. They tied up that night alongside a spit of land, but no one dared disembark because of the flies, and because they had not forgotten that glimpse of the merfolk.