"It's my opinion," said Benito stiffly, "that even the Paulines are too lenient with witchcraft and magic. It's time they were both eliminated. I'm sorry you don't see things my way, Eneko. But I'm not going to let that stop me."
"The Church believes we will achieve more by a degree of tolerance, Benito."
"Tolerance is well and fine, Eneko Lopez. But tolerance doesn't mean making doormats of ourselves. The price of our tolerance is that they practice their religion within the constraints of our law and our society. If they step outside it—and if human sacrifice isn't stepping outside it then the Church, law, and society need a wake-up—I'm not going to sit back and turn a blind eye, even if you are."
Eneko Lopez shook his head. "I think you're allowing personal unhappiness to affect your judgement, Benito. This is not exactly 'human sacrifice.' Of course, the Church frowns on it . . ."
Benito stood up. "You can continue to dance around this, Eneko. I'm not going to."
He walked out, down toward the sea. Part of him longed to simply fling himself off the walls and down into it. To make an end of sorts. But . . . well, there was Alessia. She depended on him. And, right now, he depended on her. And there was work to be done.
As he was passing a street fountain, now gurgling with water—the Citadel had water, if not food—he heard someone call. He turned to see the Crenae nymph he'd followed to Alessia's rescue beckoning to him. "Valdosta."
"Alessia? Is she all right?"
"There are less-well-guarded crown jewels," sniffed the nymph sarcastically. "Anyway, you're worrying about nothing. The priestess wouldn't hurt a child, not even for her own life's sake."
"A matter of opinion," said Benito angrily.
"Not really," said the nymph. "We see deeper into the spiritual side of you humans than you can. And our sister Juliette would not allow harm to come to Alessia. Since her mother sacrificed herself for the island, we of nonhuman kind feel repayment to her child is the great Goddess's justice."
"Good. Now, if you'll excuse me I have a poplar tree to fell. The first part of my justice."
The nymph plainly realized just which tree he was speaking about. She winced. "Retribution won't help, Benito. And you will hurt many of those who are trying to help the child. Our kind depend on the protection of the Mother Goddess. Maria is the living embodiment of that Goddess."
Benito shrugged. "That's what you say. As far as I can work out, De Belmondo at best helped Maria kill herself, deprived Alessia of her mother and me of my anchor. I don't look on what I am going to do as revenge. I'd call it prevention of this ever happening again. As for the nonhumans: You're long-lived. Don't tell me this hasn't happened before. Don't tell me it was always a case of siege and starvation. You let probably miserable women do this, time and again, leaving broken hearts and spirits in their wake—for your benefit. You were content to benefit from their misery. You just let it pass. You had your chance to do something. You didn't. Now you must suffer the consequences."
The Crenae-nymph wilted back somewhat from the sheer force of his bitterness. There was some justice in what he said. Most of Aidoneus' brides had gone to him deeply unhappy.
"If we arranged it so that you could speak to Maria . . . you could see that we and the priestess spoke the simple truth. Would that be acceptable to you? She isn't dead, Benito Valdosta. Just beyond the reach of mortals, creating life and light into the shadow world so that it may be reborn into ours."
Benito shook his head. "I only look stupid, nymph. I'm not gullible. You nonhumans are masters of illusions. I'd want to see, touch and be sure this was Maria, before I trusted. And then I'd bring her home."
The nymph bit her lip. "You could try. She—like you—doesn't belong in the Kingdom of the Dead. Aidoneus can do nothing to stop you. She is there by her choice. And while glamour may work on other people—we know it doesn't work on you. You can see us."
"Probably because you choose to be seen. The honest truth is that I don't trust you, I certainly don't trust that priestess of yours, and I don't trust this great Goddess cult. Show me and I might change my mind. It's not likely, though."
The nymph nodded. "Very well. We'll arrange it. You will need to take a boat to the Acheron and then go to Acheroussia, the lake of lamentation."
"You tell me where and when, and I'll be there," said Benito. "I'll have to break out of here, and I'll have to take a bit of care about that. I've got responsibilities now."
The nymph lifted a shoulder. "Then why don't you wait? The Venetian fleet is coming tomorrow and with it your brother, the mage Marco. You can give Alessia into his care."
"Very well. I'm going to go and read up on this Acheroussia and this Aidoneus. I never saw the sense in book-learning before. I'm beginning to understand its purpose. Your tree and your temples have a respite. But it is a temporary one. And I'm going to take steps to see that just killing me won't get your lot off the hook." His expression left no doubt about the reality of that threat.
In shrines across the island, women enacted the rites of spring, danced the star dances, to the sound of the reed-pipes. And this year the embodiment of the great Goddess, She who is fertility and new life, responded with a vigor not seen for many a century.
Renate had the satisfaction of knowing that the new avatar was the strongest for many years. The women who had gone as willing brides weren't usually of the caliber of Maria.
She also knew that Maria had brought a dark cloud to rest over the old religion's centuries of invulnerability. From time immemorial the great Goddess's place had been something immovable in the face of changing times.
Now it met a force that would not be stopped.
"I told you I would help," Maria said, stubbornly, but with no little pride.
He laughed; she was a little startled. She hadn't expected a laugh out of him. "So you did," he said. "So—you, whose magic is of the earth and life—what is it that you think you can do in war?"
Maria paused, and thought, and remembered a certain legend she'd heard, sung by a troubadour at Kat's wedding-feast. The man had run out of love songs, and, in desperation, was trotting out some wildly inappropriate ballads.
This one was about Saint Joseph of Arimathea, and his staff, and a thorn-tree.
"I'll show you," she said, taking a deep breath, and gathering in her power.
She began on land, for everywhere in Emeric's camp there was wood. Tent-poles, wagon-wheels, gun-carriages. Where the blessed rain fell on them, she reached with her power, woke up the wood, and reminded it that it had been alive once, and growing. She passed over the land with her power, and His, stretched out in a great shadow behind her. And where her shadow fell, whatever could grow, did. Whatever had once grown, grew again. On the plains of desolation, a carpet of flowers grew.
And trees. Many of them. Growing out of what had been Emeric's weapons of war. Which he would not be moving again any time soon, if at all—for out of life, comes death, and his mighty cannons were not faring well at all beneath her rains.
Now she turned her attention toward the siege on the water. True, water was not her province. But eventually, all ships come to land—or have earth aboard them, in the form of ballast. And where earth was, so was she . . .
Beside her, the Lord of Shadows laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Emeric looked at the stream of muddy water creeping into his ornate gilded pavilion and swore. It had been raining now for five days. Sometimes it had slacked off to a drizzle. But mostly it had just poured. The homunculus Elizabeth had provided had plainly been destroyed. Emeric had to regard any magician who could do that with respect. The resultant rain was making the siege into a disaster. The Spianada was a quagmire. The accursed Venetians used the chaos ensuing when the Hungarian cannon were turned on Emeric's own men, and the burning of the camp by raiders, to retake the outer curtain wall.
They probably couldn't hold it . . . if the rain let up. But the rain was altering everything. The rain had flooded the mine; it had also flooded the gap between the moles, washing one away and making the other unstable. Emeric had insufficient tents for his men after the fire, and the mosquitoes had used the rain as a time to catch up on a winter's worth of breeding. The night-air hummed with them. Emeric could only hope the Venetians in the Citadel and the insurgents in the mountains were suffering just as much. But apparently the sea breezes gave the Citadel some relief, and the higher places were never as bad.
What was truly worrying were the reports of disease starting to break out in the crowded quarters. It appeared to be some sort of cyclic fever. What the locals called "malaria." It was apparently something they'd mostly lived through as children. Emeric's troops largely came from areas where it didn't occur. Without that childhood immunity, the soldiers who caught it often died.
A rider came galloping up through the rain. "Sire, the Venetian and Imperial troops have landed in Sidari. We think at least twenty thousand men."
Emeric closed his eyes. "Call the admiral."
"He is coming up the hill, Sire."
Emeric and the admiral looked at the hulls of the galleys. They wouldn't be sailing anywhere in those vessels.
The dead wood had started to sprout. Sprout? That was too mild a word for what was happening. It was growing before his very eyes. Roots were creeping down toward the earth. Shoots were edging out of the twisting wood toward where the sun would be if it stopped raining.
"If they were touching the shore, this is what happened. Even if they weren't touching the shore, this is happening in the holds, where the ballast is. With the fireboat attack and then this . . ."
The admiral shrugged. "I don't have a fleet any more. The galliots have almost all been pulled up and won't be sailing again. Unless you want to start building from scratch, that is. The timber is turning back into woodland. It's plainly magical."
Emeric snarled in frustration. "It is magic. Very powerful magic." He sighed. "Very well. We need to start ferrying my troops across to our camp over on the Illyrian shore." He already knew what would be happening to the wooden wheels of the gun-carriages. Emeric saw defeat looming. It was time to snatch what he could and run.
Maria was learning how the shadows of this place intersected and related. They shifted and moved in something like a great, complex dance, but she had as yet to find exactly how the steps went or hear the music they moved to. She found she could see into places distant and remote, if not quite as Aidoneus did—at will—at least with increasing clarity.
Some of them led into this place, too. It was vast beyond all imagining. Here she could walk into the shadows, walk among the dead—even talk to them.
The intensity which they'd had in life was gone, and now they gave her great deference as the lady of the living and bride of the king. She discovered she could find people just by desiring to do so. They were considerably less frightening than she'd thought they would be. And somehow, no matter where she was, the almond tree remained in sight.
She'd expected to find Umberto, or Erik's Svanhild, but—
"Not here," the Lord of the Dead, said, divining her thought before she could speak it. "Not now; they came here, and passed on, to their own place. Your Christians all merely pass on, and the followers of Allah, and of other gods. Only those who believe that death will bring them here, to me, remain with me. Every man goes to his own afterlife, according to his beliefs. And every man sees me as his beliefs dictate."
He looked over his kingdom, musing, a little smile on his lips. "You would be surprised to hear what your Christians see me as."
That made her blink. "Saint Peter?" she hazarded.
"Sometimes. Sometimes." And he would say nothing more than that.
Time down here seemed to have little meaning, but Maria found there was one person she had not been able to find. She supposed Aidoneus might be keeping Benito aside. She was at first embarrassed to ask. He was dead, and she'd made her choices. But she wished she could just tell him . . .
She asked instead for help in choosing the right shadow to see Alessia. Aidoneus would be a patient lover, she thought—if he was going to be a lover at all, in that sense. He seemed to have infinite time to attend to her, to talk to her, to listen. He was, she decided, much like Umberto in some ways—except that he allowed her space, too. But now Aidoneus took her hand again, and directed her eyes into a pattern of shadows.
She could see Alessia as if she was leaning over her crib. But the place was unfamiliar. It was very grand. It must be Renate's apartments. She tried to move her view outwards to see the priestess, wishing she could thank her for her care.
Something resisted that change in focus.
Maria tried again.
The resistance held firm, but she recognized the person behind it now: Aidoneus.
She let go his hand, still staring into the shadow. It blurred, becoming one with a myriad of other shadows. She squinted at it, wrinkling her forehead in effort. It was like staring into the brightness of reflected sunlight on the water. But she saw now. Saw through it. Saw Benito pick his daughter up and hold her.
She turned away, after staring for a long, long time. She turned to Aidoneus. "You knew."
He nodded. "I number the living and the dead. I know each by their inner flames. Each and every one is different. I know the when of their passing if not the other details that the fates weave. Sometimes there is doubt. A place where the thread is thin. That one's thread is like a cable."
From a high vantage point, Iskander Beg watched. The Lord of the Mountains was waiting. Very few of the invaders would return to Hungary.
Jagiellon had known before he arrived in Count Mindaug's chambers that the treacherous advisor had fled. Still, there were ways of extracting information even from walls if one were as powerful as the Grand Duke was.
Mindaug had plainly planned it well. Every volume of his precious library was gone, too. Jagiellon set about the magics that would let him know where Mindaug had gone. Eventually a face appeared in the blood-filled bowl. A very beautiful woman's face.
Elizabeth Bartholdy.
So. Much was now clear to the demon who lurked within Jagiellon. The Grand Duke of Lithuania had a new enemy, it seemed. Not "new," exactly, for he'd always known that the Hungarian sorceress was hostile. But he hadn't realized, till now, that she was such an active opponent; a player herself in the great contest, it seemed—and a major one.
Her motive was clear also, and it was not the normal drive for conquest. Elizabeth Bartholdy was, in her own way, more interested in the spirit than the flesh. She thought to tap the power of the one whom not even Chernobog would name, without paying the inescapable price. And might even have grown powerful enough to have done so, had she succeeded in trapping him. Bathing in the blood of virgins prolonged her life. Bathing in the blood of Chernobog . . . would have prolonged it for a very long time, if not perhaps eternally.
Grand Duke Jagiellon ordered servants to sterilize Mindaug's quarters, clean away every trace of the traitor. Then, when they were done, ordered his soldiery to sterilize the rooms still further, smearing the walls with the blood and brains and entrails of the servants. Then, when that was done, he ordered that wing of the palace burnt to the ground.
The bonfire produced a memorable stench. The flames, despite the feverish efforts of the soldiers, singed some other portions of the palace also. But Jagiellon was indifferent. A few charred timbers here and there were a small price to pay for power. He need no longer fear that Mindaug might have left some magical links behind.
Jagiellon's fury had ebbed by then, in any event. There was always this to look forward to: The skin of the beautiful Hungarian sorceress would make a memorable meal, someday in the future, with Mindaug's as the appetizer.
The triumphal fleet sailed into the anchorage off the Citadel of Corfu, led by three light galleys and a number of fishing vessels. It was a small gesture, but a significant one.
Amid the cheering, Marco was one of the first ashore, looking for Benito among the emaciated defenders. He found him, with a baby on his knee.
"Ah. Godfather," said Benito with a tired smile. "The man I need. Here. Have her."
"Er."
"Stella here will help you with practical details like feeding and cleaning," said Benito, putting a hand on her shoulder. "As for entertainment, Brother, you're on your own. She sleeps a lot, luckily for you. And she likes to dance. Even my dancing. Although she probably won't by the time I get back."
"But . . . where are you going? What happened to Maria, Benito?"
"I'm going to try and bring her back from the Kingdom of the Dead."
Marco grabbed Benito as he began to turn. "Maria was my friend too, 'Nito. Now tell me exactly what you're planning to do and what has happened."
Marco was unprepared for the tears streaming down Benito's face.