Risen (28 page)

Pausing, he steadied himself, forced
himself not to step to the chaise and lift the book to spy what
secrets lay within its pages. When Moira glanced first at the book
and then at Moulin, he shook his head saying, “We mustn’t disturb
anything. We should simply do as we are told. Risen’s life may
depend on it.”

“You love her, don’t you.” It was
not a question.

The statement was sudden and cruel,
though she’d probably not meant it to be so. Moulin’s lips creased
tightly together. He did not turn to look at Moira, did not answer
her, but only pinched his eyes closed very tightly.

A deep sigh barely escaped him, and
he admitted, “It pains me to lose this child, more than I can say.”
He looked at Moira, the torment so evident in his eyes. “It pains
me even more that she should lose him, that she might suffer for
the loss of her son.”

“You love her…and I love him—Ravan.
And, there is not a thing more we can do about it.”

Moulin stared at her, not wishing to
believe, to accept her words as true. “Yes,” he whispered, “and
that is our plight for eternity.” When she said nothing, he added
almost harshly, “And enough of this. We have work to
do.”

Nodding dumbly, Moira heaved the two
small sacks up onto the table and appeared that she might remove
the items, but then decided not to. Moulin went to the char-pot
next to the hearth and lifted the clay lid from it. Taking from the
small pot a clump of smoldering, tightly rolled, cloth embers, he
laid them on the hearth and pitched a tiny cone of wood slivers and
kindle chips until he was satisfied.

Blowing softly on the char cloth,
the smoldering stack sparked and lit within seconds. He fed the
small flame until an appreciable fire was soon crackling on the
hearth, and the chill was retreating, escaping the small room like
water from a fist.

Evening was upon them, and the
singular window offered very little light. Moira walked to the
hearth, took up a lighting twig—a long, thin splinter of wood
designed specifically for transferring fire from the hearth to
candles—and lit several about the room until there was substantial
enough light for them to see. The once starkly cold room, with its
streaks on the floor and austere interior, was suddenly smaller and
more intimate with the warm companionship of fire.

At precisely the exact moment that
Moulin was about to send Moira with word that the hearth was
prepared, the door opened, and in stepped Nicolette. He was
immediately overwhelmed. She was so eternally engaging that it
regularly took his breath away, but at times like this, with the
dancing shadows and the gold wash of the firelight, she seemed as
though she was not of this world. Even Moira stepped away with a
soft gasp as Nicolette slipped silently past her, into the
room.

Pulling her hood from her head, she
undid the catch at her throat and allowed it to fall. She’d braided
her long hair on one side and twined the braid around her head,
effectively holding the rest of her ebony mane behind her back.
Securing the braid at the nape of her neck was a simple twisted,
coil of gold. It was starkly elegant and in beautiful contrast with
the nearly snow white of her skin.

Nicolette passed the cloak to Moira.
It was then that Moulin noticed the three scrolls tucked carefully
under her arm. He’d never seen them before.

Without acknowledging them, she
walked to the chaise, took up the book and closed it without
marking it—laying it on the seat instead. She placed the folded
scrolls carefully next to it. When they appeared as she wanted, she
turned about and gazed at her two assistants as though having just
seen them. They both stood unmoving, Moira with a look of expectant
uncertainty on her face and Moulin with his heart in the back of
his throat.

“The items?” Nicolette asked. “May
I see them?”

“Yes, yes of course.” Moira hurried
to the small table and opened the sack, removing the items one at a
time. She didn’t seem entirely happy about it as she laid upon the
table, in no particular order, a small handheld mirror, a bowl of
white clay, a dead bird, a ball of twine, a smooth, immaculately
white pebble, a small flask of red wine, Ravan’s and Risen’s
hairbrushes in turn, and…a knife.

“Did the bird die of its own
accord?” Nicolette asked.

“Yes, my Lady—flew into a window
this morning it seems. So recently that it is still nearly soft,
almost like it’s only sleeping.” Even so, Moira was unwilling to
handle it and rolled the carcass out of the sack and onto the table
with a flick of her wrist.

Nicolette approached the opposite
side of the table and began to arrange the items just so. First was
the small, oval mirror, laid face up on the center of the table. On
the mirror she rested the dead starling, small talons curled
severely, the beak gaping open, and eyes pinched shut. Taking the
white clay, Nicolette carefully went to work, filling the black
bird’s mouth until the beak was full of the smooth clay. She was
meticulous to remove any excess. When it was to her satisfaction,
the bird looked as though it was emitting a silent, white
scream.

Next, she went to the scrolls,
gathering them up with the peculiar book. Laying the book on the
table, Nicolette passed each scroll in turn over the smooth surface
of the closed book in a very deliberate fashion. When it appeared
she was satisfied, she then passed them over the bird and mirror
before laying the scrolls aside.

Nicolette took, what seemed to
Moulin, a maddening amount of time to do this, her eyes blinking
slowly as though time was unimportant, fading away from them. All
at once, she arranged the three rolled parchments around the bird
so that they were in the fashion of a triangle with the bird and
mirror laying centermost of them.

“I-I don’t understand—” Moira
began, but Moulin hushed her, and she stepped backward into the
shadows next to him, allowing Nicolette to continue without
interruption.

Taking the smooth, white pebble, she
next held a candle at an angle and dripped the wax liberally upon
it before swiftly wrapping the silk twine about it. She
crisscrossed the string around the rock until it wound both ways so
that the stone was securely tethered at the end of approximately
two meters of twine.

Next, holding the pebble in one
hand, she passed the coiled up twine to Moulin, indicating he
should secure it to an overhead rafter. He did just that, crawling
onto the small table and steadying himself before passing the
thread several times round the beam until the pebble was suspended
from the ceiling directly over the table.

When the pebble was secured to her
satisfaction, Nicolette motioned for help, and they shifted the
small table very precisely, arranging it so the bird was resting
directly under the dangling wax-pebble. It was an utterly bizarre
process, and all the while, nobody spoke.

Next, Nicolette took a single strand
of Risen’s hair, pulling it carefully from his brush. Holding it up
so that she could see it waft gently in the heat of the candle’s
flame, she then dropped it directly above the dead bird so that it
floated down and lay carefully across the body of the
starling.

Walking to the small cupboard, she
removed a delicate stoneware goblet and carried it to the table,
placing it precisely on one corner of the scrolls triangle—the one,
Moulin noticed, that pointed west. Measuring carefully, she filled
the vessel half with red wine.

He winced, had to physically stop
himself from interfering, as next she took the blade and placed it
flat across the palm of her hand. Moira’s hand and stump went up to
cover her mouth, and Moulin clenched his fists as he willed himself
to not react at what she did next.

Nicolette did not pull the blade
across her palm but rather wrapped her fingers around it, narrowed
her eyes, and squeezed until a tiny trickle of blood dripped from
her closed hand into the goblet of wine.

Laying the blade gently aside,
Nicolette murmured something unintelligible before dipping her
fingers into the wine-blood mixture and flicking the sprinkles of
it upon the bird and mirror. Setting the mug aside, she then rested
both hands on the edge of the table, closed her eyes and stood,
braced, head bowed, seemingly as unmoving as the dead
fowl.

Moulin squinted to even see that she
was still breathing. When he thought he could take it no longer,
just when he believed he must speak, something happened…

Ever so faintly, the pebble stirred.
At first it seemed like it might be an illusion, and Moira gasped
softly from the shadows, but then it moved again, slanting toward
one of the scrolls. It stayed this way, not swinging as a pendulum
might, but pulling as though it was polarized.

Reaching for that particular scroll,
Nicolette brushed the other two aside. Unrolling the map, she slid
it carefully beneath the mirror and dead starling. Then, repeating
the process of flicking the blood-wine droplets and bracing herself
in otherworldly meditation, the strange beauty manipulated the map
repeatedly until the pebble pulled no more but remained unmoving,
suspended straight above the bird and Risen’s strand of
hair.

Sliding the mirror and bird
carefully aside, Nicolette peered at the map, intently studying the
detail that had been just beneath the mirror and hanging pebble.
She took a drop of her own blood and marked the spot with a
delicate fingerprint.

Next, she repeated the entire
process, only with Ravan’s hair instead of Risen’s. Ultimately, the
same scroll was chosen, only the final fingerprint was more north
and east of the Ravan Dynasty, not south and east as Risen’s mark
had been. This caused the dark-haired mystic to furrow her brow
softly and utter something quite unfamiliar, barely overheard by
the other two within the room. Moulin wondered if it were a
language he simply did not know she possessed, then decided it was
not.

Moira and Moulin had been silent for
some time, and they remained so, as though afraid to disturb the
delicate proceedings. At length, she gently rolled up the scroll.
Nicolette appeared to be done with the process.

The two of them cautiously
approached the table, and just as Moulin started to help her clean
up the materials, the bird suddenly twitched, gasped, and choked
the white clay from its beak, hopping up as though from a
nap.

They were speechless, staring first
at the bird then at each other.

“It would appear our feathered
friend was simply reposing,” Nicolette murmured almost playfully
and reached for the bird, encircling it with one hand before
walking to the doorway and releasing it into the night.

CHAPTER TWENTY

†

Risen glanced over his shoulder to
look for Sylvie. There she was, several horses back, and as though
sensing his eye on her, she met his gaze. He tried to smile at her,
to give her in some fashion the strength of hope, but his smile
would not come of its own honesty, and he dropped his eyes, unable
to endure the fear that he believed he saw behind hers.

They’d been taken, and he didn’t
know why. He could not know that such an act was uncommon enough,
but not entirely unheard of, and was most often a cruel stab by
traveling mercenaries to recoup losses after failed battles.
Children were taken, largely males, and sold for a decent profit,
mostly to the east.

Perhaps this would not have been so
commonplace except that there was, at this time, a demand for child
slaves in the Ottoman Empire. There the Sultan grew an army trained
of orphans—conditioned to serve the greater good of the empire,
taught to fight and die.

It was necessary to have children,
and preferably lost souls, to accomplish this, for their young
minds were malleable where adult slaves frequently were not. The
children were trained to believe their final hours would be on a
battle field and that dying was the ultimate honor. And this was
accomplished well, fueling the wave of triumph that one named Murad
I rode as Sultan of a strange and growing nation.

That first night was exhausting.
Pulled from their horses, the children were bound and tethered to a
tree. The ground was soaked and, without shelter, the cold was
perilous. Furthermore, they were not the only ones who’d been
taken. Ten paces away, also tethered to a tree, were four more
boys. Risen thought he recognized three of the four—two were boys
from the village, one was completely unfamiliar, and the other one
he knew very well. He knew him because it was Rowan…his
friend.

Rowan, Cedric, and Tobias had been
his very best friends. Days spent with them were glorious, for
unlike some realms, theirs was very stable. And so, cavorting
around the castle grounds, the village, and surrounding woods had
been a recipe of bliss for three boys. Yes, life was good. But even
so, childhood survivability was inherently with great risk. If
someone was lucky enough to survive the handful of diseases that
visited youth, they had a much greater chance of reaching old age.
It was this pediatric demise that dragged the life expectancy curve
sharply downward.

Risen knew this, was keenly aware of
this on some level for he’d witnessed his mother visit failing
ones, sit with them in their darkest hours. It was something that
quietly disturbed him for a reason he could not identify. He never
fully understood how, when a dying child suffered, Nicolette wished
to lay her hands upon them. What he did not see was that although
it did not mean the child would survive, it seemed the pain would
leave for a span, replaced by a soft peace on the face of the
suffering one. Then, she would sit however long it took, touching
the afflicted one until the worse life could offer them had finally
passed.