The Dragon Book (28 page)

“If you think it beyond your capabilities, we may simply begin with the burning.”

“No, no! That’s fine. We’ll go plant a sword in the Devil’s womb or something like that.”

With that, Sir Leonard spun on his heel and began to trudge down the platform, barely stopping at Armecia’s abrupt cough.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Oh … right.” The knight turned again and regarded the chaplain warily. “How, precisely, do you know that we won’t just run away once you let her go?”

“An excellent point.” The chaplain nodded. With a glance to the altar boy, he gestured to the book in the lad’s hands. “We shall retain the book of spells and divine its meaning. Even if she is proved to be a witch, she shall be powerless.”

“Wait!” Armecia protested. “It’s just a log! A chronicle! I can’t do anything unnatural with it.”

“Well, there was that one time you—”

“Lenny,
shut up
!” She turned to the chaplain with a look of pleading. “It’s worthless. Let me have it, and you can have something else.” She glanced about the platform before looking to the knight. “Him!”

“Apparently, it is worthy enough of your protest.” The chaplain narrowed his eyes upon her. “And that makes me suspicious … not enough, however, to deny the world a chance to have a taint cleansed from the earth.” He straightened up proudly. “You will find Zeigfreid’s lair to the north. Do be hasty. Taint persists forever, pages, decidedly less so.”

“THE Devil, above all, is a deceiver.”

Though he had ended his declaration with the slightest quiver of his lips, Father Scheitzen’s voice could never be described as gentle; his church made certain of that. Its halls were a vast, granite throat, its door a mouth with wood and steel teeth. What he whispered, the church demanded. When he uttered, the church decreed. When he roared, the church shook heaven and earth.

Heathens and drunkards occasionally mused that the priest owed his entire success to the architecture of his temple. These particular ideas, of course, were voiced far, far away from the church’s great, spired ears.

“He takes many forms,” the priest continued, the sweeping of his robe’s hem an angry hiss upon the floor. “He is the desire and temptation that lurks at the edge of the noble man’s eyes. He is the frailty in our arms, He is the rust on our swords, and He is the hole in our armor.”

Father Scheitzen turned his gaze upward. The afternoon sun pouring through the stained glass painted his face crimson, glazed his eyes to angry black orbs.

“He is the heathen in the south,” he spoke, “He is the barbarian in the north. All these are the Devil’s influence, but these are His subtleties, His deceptions, His lies.”

His neck twisted so slowly that his vertebrae groaned like old iron.

“For as vile as He is, He can merely corrupt, never create. The heathen is merely a man with untrained ears, who has heard the Devil’s silken voice. Should we then condemn so easily? Should we deny all cries for redemption? To do so would be to deny mercy itself.”

Crimson light beat down upon his shoulders and the naked pate of his shaven head. He ceased to have a face at that moment; his countless wrinkles bathed him in an infinite mask of shadow.

“We … I … am not a man without mercy.” He regarded the man before him evenly. “Am I?”

Nitz’s first thought was that men of mercy typically did not wear great spiked maces dangling from their sashes.

Whatever other terrifying features the priest might have, his scarred scalp, his clenched jaw, his huge, brutish arms, ceased to have any effect in the presence of this ominous weapon. Its crimson was far deeper than that wrought by the sunlight; it had seen many heathen skulls caved, countless barbarian bones broken, untold numbers of false priests’ faces smashed.

The blood would never fully wash off it.

“Am I?”

“N-no, Father,” Nitz replied, straining to hide the quaver in his voice.

To have even a foot touched by the shadow of Father Scheitzen, the shadow of a Crusader so famed and noble, would make a fully grown man quiver. Half of the priest’s long shade was enough to engulf a man such as Nitz. It took all he had to keep his legs from twisting over each other.

“I am not,” Father Scheitzen nodded in reply, his neck creaking. “Nor are you.” He cast a glance over the smaller man’s head, toward the towering figure behind him. “Nor, I suspect, is she.”

Nitz followed the priest’s gaze to his companion. Father Scheitzen’s shadow did not yet extend so far as to engulf Madeline. Nitz doubted there was a man yet who had grown tall enough to do that. She did not cast a shadow but rose as one, towering and swaddled in the ominous blackness of her nun’s habit, her head so high as to scrape against the torch ensconced in the pillar she stood alongside.

“Maddy,” Nitz caught himself, “Sister Madeline … is not without mercy, no, Father.” He flashed a smile, painfully aware of the stark whiteness of his teeth in the church’s gloom. “After all, she owes her life to the mercy of others. Who but the church would have a … creature such as her?”

Nitz took private pleasure in the shudder Father Scheitzen gave as Madeline stepped forward.

The torchlight was decidedly unsympathetic. All her face was bared, from the manly square curve of her jaw, to the jagged scar running down her cheek, to the milky discolored eye set in the right half of her skull and the grim darkness in her left. The jagged yellow of her smile-bared teeth was nothing more than a sigh, a comma at the end of the cruel joke that was a woman’s visage.

“Ah, a Scarred Sister. I suspect you may have inadvertently stumbled upon a solution to a problem that has long plagued the Order,” Father Scheitzen murmured, bringing his lips close to Nitz. “There are rumors, complaints of lesser men accompanied by lesser women thinking themselves and each other worthy servants of God. Their mutual weakness feeds off each other, men raise illegitimate children by tainted nuns.” He spared a glancing grimace for the woman behind them. “I trust you and your companion have no such temptations.”

Nitz hesitated a moment to answer, allowing the image of temptation to fill his mind. He had seen what lay beneath the layers of black cloth: the rolling musculature, the scarred, pale flesh, the biceps that could break ribs with an embrace. The thought of succumbing to “temptation” had not, until this moment, crossed his mind; the foreplay alone would shatter his pelvis.

“Of course not, Father,” he said with a timely twitch, “our devotion is to God and his Divine Warfare. Her … unfortunate appearance is naught but a blessing to keep our motives pure.”

“I suspected no less,” Father Scheitzen spoke. “But I did not summon you to my church to question your choice of company.” His scowl deepened; his face went hard. “I have called you here for two reasons: the Devil and your father.”

Nitz bit back a sigh at mention of the latter.

“Their paths frequently crossed, I am told, Father.”

“That is an astute observation.” The priest inclined his head. “Undoubtedly, you have already heard of the countless victories your father dedicated to God. The exploits of him and Fraumvilt, his beloved mace, are legendary. His weapon caved in more heathen skulls than any weapon ever raised in the service of God.” He stroked the hilt of his own spiked weapon with a sort of remorseful lust. “Krenzwuld, my own metal bride, is nothing but a fancy stick in comparison.”

“I am scarcely a worthy judge of mace quality, Father.”

“So it is true.”

Father Scheitzen cast a disapproving glare at the axe strapped to Nitz’s back, sparing two frowns. One for the barbarian weapon itself and one for the fact that it was large enough to threaten to topple the young man.

“I am told,” the priest began, the disbelief in his voice unhidden, “that this … weapon of yours has spilled much heathen blood. Tell me, what is her name?”

His expectant stare caused Nitz to start. The young man’s eyes went wide, his lips fumbling for the answer. He felt crushed, caught between the Father’s suspicious scowl and the envious glare boring into the back of his head.

“Wolfreiz,” came the unexpectedly deep voice from behind. Sister Madeline inclined a head to the young man.

“My companion is correct,” Nitz said, nodding. “Wolfreiz. I sometimes find myself unable to speak the name, it fills me with as much fear as it does the heathen.”

“A decent, godly name,” Father Scheitzen nodded. “Your father would have approved its title, if not its heritage. He was a true warrior of God; the origin mattered less in the light of the mercy it would bring.” A smile tugged at his lip. “He brought much mercy in the name of God.

“And yet, he was not God. There yet remained a foe he could not destroy.” From the depths of his robe, Father Scheitzen produced a scroll, old and frayed at the edges, sealed with crimson wax. “The Devil Himself.”

“I would hope Father does not find my lack of surprise insulting. My progenitor, as great as he was, could not defeat Our Eternal Foe.” Nitz hesitated, swallowing hard. “Or was Father being facetious?”

Nitz kept his face straight, despite the narrowing of Father Scheitzen’s eyes, despite his huge hand gliding to the hilt of his mace. He had long since grown used to the reaction; Crusaders often displayed such at the mention of words they did not understand.

“… yes. I was.”

Nitz allowed himself to breathe a little.

“Regardless, I speak of the Devil bereft of His trickeries, bereft of His lies and deceptions.” Father Scheitzen stroked the scroll in his hands with the same fondness with which he would touch one of his own scars. “Creatures with no use for subtlety. Evil in its purest, most honest form, if evil is capable of such honesty.”

His eyes were cold stones.

“Dragons.”

“Dragons, Father?” Nitz kept his next thought—that dragons were creatures of myth born out of fear or drunkenness—far from his lips. Crusaders did not like to be questioned.

“A dragon. Specifically,
this
dragon: Zeigfreid.”

“Zeigfreid?”

“Are you aware of how annoying it is to hear myself repeated?”

“Annoy—No, Father, I was not aware. Please, go on.”

“I shall.” Father Scheitzen thrust the scroll toward Nitz. “This creature, Zeigfreid,” he paused, challenging Nitz, before continuing, “is one of the Devil’s many agents on earth. Have you ever seen such a thing, young vassal?”

“Zeigfreid …
specifically
, Father?” Nitz took the scroll carefully.

“I see that your humor is much like your father’s chosen weapon,” Father Scheitzen growled. “Blunt and prone to beating people over the head. It seems the branches of your familial tree were twisted.”

“And I can see that Father’s wit is as sharp as the sword that he remains too pure to carry.”

“I have seen a dragon, vassal,” Father Scheitzen continued. “Skin the color of blood, wings that blot out the sun, spewing hell from its mouth … like the Devil Himself, he cared not for whether he slew Crusader or heathen upon the field.”

“Gruesome, Father,” Nitz said, fingering the scroll. “And you would like me to deliver this to a temple worthy of dealing with such a beast?”

“Those were the orders handed down by the Order’s Council of Three,” Father Scheitzen uttered. “But, as I said, I am a man not without mercy and thus, I deliver this scroll to you directly.”

“To me, Father?”

“Of course, vassal. If Zeigfreid proves too much for you, we will certainly deal with him. However, for the moment, I thought it better to offer you a chance to earn Fraumvilt … to honor your father’s memory and strike down the one agent of evil that he could not.”

Nitz swallowed hard, as unsure how to react as he was unsure what the message Father Scheitzen had just delivered to him was. He had been admitted into the vassalry only a year ago, along with every other young man who had proved himself worthy of an honor higher than squire. He had expected, as all vassals did, to deliver messages through battlefields from church to church, not fight agents of evil.

Then again,
he reminded himself with a roll of his eyes,
I wasn’t expecting to be paired with savage, disfigured brutes, either.

Instinctively, he looked over his shoulder. Madeline’s good eye was big and bright, her smile was broad and ugly. Her scar twitched in time with her cheek. He saw her hand sliding under her habit, long fingers trembling with contained anticipation.

“This scroll”—the priest seized Nitz’s attention—“contains all that we know of Zeigfreid: where we saw him last, where he was heading, what the last known size of his treasure trove was.”

He heard Madeline whimper excitedly behind him.

“Treasure, Father?”

“Would it shock you to learn that, being agents of the Devil, dragons are voraciously greedy?”

“Not entirely.”

“Of course, it goes without saying that once you slay the beast, its hoard goes to the church to finance the struggle against the heathen.”

“Of course, Father. Crusaders need gold.”

“Crusaders need only God,” Father Scheitzen snarled. “Greedy merchants and smiths
demand
gold for the steel we put to use against the heathen.” He composed himself with a stiff inhalation. “To bring down Zeigfreid, you will need God
and
steel.” He glanced over Nitz to the titanic axe he wore upon his back. “I trust you can wield that?”