The Necromancer's Grimoire Page 24
The men standing in front of her moved away and the tall white hat of the agha appeared. Kemal Reis moved to stand behind him. The reis’s eyes were wary. She tried to get him to look at her but he would not. She knew he feared she would control him with her eyes.
The agha surveyed the crowd, then said in Arabic, “What have you done?”
Nadira answered, “We want to enter the prison and release the frenki knight, Malcolm Corbett.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. The mob had stilled as each soldier strained to hear their leader’s words. The agha stared at her. Nadira stood straighter, and pushed the hair back over her eyes. “Let us pass through the gate.” She pitched her voice for command and saw the agha jerk his arm and take a step before stopping himself. He appeared puzzled.
“Nadira Sultana,” Kemal whispered, “this cannot work. The janissaries have overturned the great cooking pots in their barracks.”
She frowned, puzzled.
“That means they are in rebellion against the sultan. I do not know how you have survived the walk through the crowd.” His eyes flashed over the faces of the fierce soldiers then back to her. “What are you doing?”
The conversation with the reis divided her concentration. She heard the angry sound of the janissaries around her swell like the buzzing of hornets as they were one by one released from her tendrils. They began to push closer.
Behind her Montrose grasped his sword and drew several inches of steel before she could stop him with a hand on his.
“Open the gate,” she insisted. “Quickly.”
The agha nodded and the gatekeeper signaled to the men on the winches. The gate slowly rose with a metallic scrape and a rasping wheeze.
She walked quickly into the darkness of the old prison, her men behind her. Kemal and the agha passed under the portcullis and she heard it being lowered behind them. Montrose took in a sharp breath and she heard his thought. We are now in a Turkish prison. She heard him wonder if this was better or worse than standing in the midst of a mob. His answer appeared in the form of a wave of sound that burst from the crowd as she completely released all of her tendrils. The portcullis clanged to its resting place.
The sudden confusion and pent anger of the milling janissaries erupted in a roar of shouting and a hard pounding that made it impossible to hear their footsteps within the prison. The sounds reverberated and echoed within the corridor and faded only when the group turned to move further into the interior of the great walls of the city.
She stopped and looked up at Montrose in the dim light. “It is better,” she answered him. She cast for Corbett and turned to the right. The men followed until she stood before the cell that contained the old Templar. The prison guards eyed them curiously, but the presence of the agha kept them at their posts and silent.
She put her hands on the bars of the cell and peered inside at Corbett. “I told you I would come for you,” she said softly.
He was slumped against the stone wall, his fine clothing torn and bloody and his face was shadowed with more than the murk of his cell. She saw the terrible bruising and felt the wounds inside him. He could not respond to her words but she knew he heard her.
She turned her head to the side and said, “Open the cell.”
The agha gestured to the guard to put the key to the lock.
She pushed past the guard as the bars opened and knelt beside Corbett. He opened the one eye that was not swollen shut and his lips moved.
“Shhh,” she hushed him, running her hands over his shoulders and chest. His wounds were inside, as she had suspected. His ribs were cracked. He would not move when she tried to reposition him. She took her hands away. She could calm a raging mob, but did not know if she could help Corbett. She knew she could put him to sleep, but he was not breathing regularly. He might suffocate if she put him down too deeply. She looked up at Montrose and gestured for him to enter. He knelt beside her.
“What do you think?” She pointed to the blood that colored the old man’s gray beard.
Montrose put his hands under Corbett’s arms and straightened him. The Templar winced. Montrose felt his ribs gently and bent his ear toward Corbett’s mouth.
“No. He breathes without a gurgle, and you can feel his chest here,” he put her hand over Corbett’s sides and moved her fingers gently along the ridges, “the bones are broken, but straight and in line. If the lung were pierced you would feel a gap where the bone turned inwards. It is not his lung that bleeds.”
She nodded. “Is it safe to put him to sleep?”
“Do it quickly,” he said. She heard the sorrow in his voice. “Can you stop the bleeding as well?”
The Grimoire told her she could. Nadira put a tendril between Corbett’s eyes that dropped him sideways into Montrose’s arms, released from his pain. Another tendril found the tear in the organ near his liver that was slowly taking his life. She closed her eyes to staunch it. She imagined the filaments of light entering his body and surrounding his wounds. She put her hands on his body and willed the seeping blood to slow and then stop. Only then did she turn to the agha and Kemal in the corridor.
“We need a safe place to rest.”
Kemal’s dark eyes held a glimmer of humor. “You are in the safest place in Istanbul, Sultana.”
She blinked at him. Of course. She sighed and leaned back against the damp wall. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Confounding the mob had exhausted her. She was the one who needed the rest. She heard Montrose beside her, laying Corbett down, then William’s voice.
“Calvin? DiMarco?” He prompted.
Her eyes flew open. “Calvin!”
The agha seemed to shake himself awake when she cried out the Templar’s name. He stared at Kemal, then at Nadira and Montrose in the cell. He frowned and put a hand to his head and rubbed his brow. Outside, the angry sounds of the men reminded him of why he was there. He turned and spoke to Kemal before walking away down the corridor, taking the guards with him.
When he was out of earshot Kemal took a step and put a hand on the bars of the cell. He said, “Revolts have happened before. It is usually about pay and privileges. Today it is about Evren Farshad.” His face was grim. “Two sorcerers have a battle in my city and now many suffer.”
Nadira saw the scene in his mind. Rioting janissaries had killed innocent travelers and citizens and pilgrims. She met his eyes. “You can see how Farshad must be stopped.”
“What did you do to him to make him so angry?” Kemal asked.
Montrose looked up. He did not understand the words, but heard the accusation in Kemal’s voice. “What did he say to you?” he asked Nadira in English. “He shall not speak to you that way.” His hand moved to the pommel of his sword.
She shook her head at him and answered Kemal in Arabic. “I took his Grimoire.” She lifted a hand and pointed to William. Kemal followed the gesture with his eyes. So did Montrose.
William put both arms around the book defensively.
“What is it?” Kemal put a hand out like he expected William to give it to him. The cleric backed away into the corridor until Kemal lowered his arm. The captain repeated, “What is it?”
“His spell book.”
Kemal said something harsh in Turkish. She shrugged and slumped lower against the wall. She could feel the night’s exertions draining her energies from her body, her excursion to help Calvin, pushing through the water in the cisterns…running…the effort of controlling the mob. She could hear Montrose calling her name. William had entered the cell. She felt him holding her arm.
“Nadira.”
She made a great effort to open her eyes. Kemal was staring at her. She looked at him and said, “Your sultan wants Farshad gone. I am doing his work. Make sure the agha understands this.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling darkness close around her. “Find DiMarco and the frenki knight, Calvin.” She did not need to pitch her voice to command. She knew he would do it.
Chapter Twelve
“He told me I am on watch,” he said in Latin. “But I do not know what I watch for. We are in a prison.”
Corbett lay stretched out beside her. She leaned over him and touched his throat beneath his beard until she felt his heartbeat against her fingers. She looked down at Montrose, quietly snoring on her other side and at William, propped amongst the straw against the far wall, asleep.
“He must trust you if he let himself sleep,” she told DiMarco as she touched Montrose.
“He despises me, lady, and you know it.”
Nadira stroked Montrose’s hair lightly so as not to disturb him. “He has strong feelings for you, Senore,” she said with a twinge of humor. “But you continue to live, therefore he does not despise you.”
She heard DiMarco shift on his pallet. He ignored her comment and said, “The cell door is not locked. Your baron would not permit it and the reis concurred. Outside sits a guard to watch us instead.”
She nodded. “Tell me how you are here with us now.”
He cleared his throat, “Sir Corbett told me you would be attempting to take the Grimoire. He told me to beware and to be ready to flee. After we were asked to leave Borelli’s house, the Templar Calvin and I went to the souk to ask after the Scotsman. We discovered that he had purchased some carpets and a cart and two horses. Your mute was with him. Calvin took me to an inn and left me there. He told me to stay in the room with our baggage. He never returned. I was awakened by the noise in the streets,” DiMarco said.
Images started to form in her mind of the janissaries targeting Calvin. She saw the Templar drawing his sword and backing against the walls of a house.
DiMarco continued, “I became frightened. I could hear the men shouting ‘death to the infidels!’ Some began to search the inns where foreigners were known to stay.”
“Oh, no,” Nadira whispered. “I had no thought that such a mob would be sparked by the theft of a book.”
“Not the theft of a book, but the rage of the necromancer. Some were killed. Yes.”
She covered her face with one hand.
DiMarco said, “It was a terrifying night. I escaped with the Hermetica and my vials. That is all.”
“You avoided the mob?”
“I am not helpless.” He put his hand on the Hermetica.
“No,” she agreed.
“I was in a different caravanserai when a messenger from the reis came to me and insisted I go with him. He told me you had sent for me. I followed. I was alarmed to find myself led through the walls to the prison, but the logic was sound, lady. We are safer within these walls than out. The mob has been dispersed. They were given some concessions and there will be a day of horse racing in the hippodrome tomorrow. Now you tell me what happened.” He tipped his head toward Corbett.
She pulled at a strand of her hair, feeling it silky and smooth instead of thickly crusted with the dried blood of a janissary. Someone had washed her and dressed her while she slept. She glanced down at Montrose. He had done it.
DiMarco interrupted her thoughts. “Tell me what happened,” he said again.
She told him about the Grimoire in the necromancer’s library and the night in the cistern.
“Can you feel him?” He meant the necromancer. “Where is his book?”
“William holds the book. The necromancer does not have a cord in me, if that is what you ask.”
“I almost wish he had, then we would know what he is up to.”
She sighed. “He has a cord in Kemal Reis. I feel him that way.”
DiMarco started. “No! Do not tell me that! Oh Jesus Mary Joseph.”
“Ssss,” she hushed him.
DiMarco stood and paced the cell. “All is lost.” She heard him praying under his breath.
She waited until he finished with Amen before prompting, “All is not lost,” she whispered. “We go to Greece.”
He turned from the window. “The White Knights were not here only to take the Grimoire from the necromancer and raise DeMolay. With the great reis controlled, all of Christendom is doomed.”
“You have a great sense of the dramatic, Senore.”
“Foolish girl. You are thinking only of yourself.”
Nadira bristled. “Is that so?” She remembered to keep her voice low, for absolutely she did not want Montrose and William in this conversation. “And tell me how all of Christendom is doomed.”
DiMarco did not answer.
She tried again. “So they have another secret. Did they make you a confidant?”
He shook his head. “They would not tell me everything. They told me that when Phillip the Fair dealt that blow to them two hundred years ago, he unknowingly destroyed the invisible support they had erected to defend Christians from the Saracen horde. Since that fateful day the Turks have been victorious against Christian armies. These many years the survivors of that order have been trying to collect their treasures. They have been recovered and are kept in secret places throughout Europe. The Hermetica was but one of them. There is another here that had been in the Hagia Sophia before the conquest. The Turks desecrated that church and made it a mosque.”
“I have seen the building,” she reminded him. “It remains a beautiful and holy place.”
He shook his head. “There is a cloth there that glows with the image of Our Savior, the Mandylion. It is inside a reliquary. They want it. With the Mandylion, the Grimoire and the Hermetica they would have been able to set up an altar in the Vatican, a power source to ward the Saracen away from our shores forever. There are more relics in Jerusalem. That is where other Templars have gone. You know the Turks have taken the east already. They strike at us whether they have treaties or not. You know the sultan landed on the peninsula not too many years ago. If they take Genoa or Venice they will move through Europe and pull down the great cathedrals and enslave us all.”
She said gently, “Is your God not great enough to defend his own people?”
DiMarco turned; she could see his anger even in the dim moonlight. “He will not defend sinners.”
Nadira put a hand to her forehead to prevent the ache she anticipated. William’s flail appeared small and insignificant in the face of such nonsense. She took a deep breath. “Your God does not demand payment in blood for your sins. I know this much. Do I not speak the truth?”
He nodded reluctantly. “The Lamb of God…”
“Yes, and yet the blood of your people is spilled in his name to atone for sins even now. And these relics would purify the people of Christendom enough to bring the hand of God down against their enemies?” She lowered her hand so she could see an answer in his eyes.
He nodded.
“How is it the reis is involved?”
DiMarco moved to stand under the window and looked up at the stars. “With the necromancer controlling him, Christendom has no chance of surviving. The peninsula will be his. Even the King of France cannot defeat the great reis and his fleet without the hand of God.”
She told DiMarco, “You are wrong. Kemal Reis is not planning an attack on the peninsula. He protects the shipping trade between the East and the West against pirates. The sultan has not ordered an attack on the Christians, and the necromancer cannot control him.” She wasn’t so sure about the last statement. She felt the disquiet in her heart that only appeared when she was telling a lie.
Nadira took hers
elf from the dark cell across the city to Kemal’s heart. She had not seen this war when she had opened him. She found him in his house in his sleeping chambers, sitting awake among the silken coverlets of his bed, his thick wavy hair obscured his face but she did not need to see his eyes to know what he was thinking. The thin red cord snaked out of his chest and looped around the room before disappearing through the ceiling above him. He knew the cord was there. She felt his desolation. He imagined the loss of his will…and his mind. He did not know how to remove the connection to the necromancer. His despair touched her like a burning brand and she recoiled from the contact. The vision snapped to nothing. She opened her eyes to see DiMarco staring at her. He had moved from the window and now stood over her.
“What did you see? You look wretched.”
She blinked tears that were not hers, but Kemal’s.
“I have done something hideous to a good man,” she whispered. “An atrocity condemned by all gods, no matter the religion.”
“We have all done things that shame us. Did you see the reis?”
“As I said,” she repeated, “None but the sultan commands him.” She hoped that saying it made it so.
“And the sultan commands him to take us to Attica?”
She sighed, “Yes. His men ready a ship.”
“And he will not bring fire and brimstone to Christendom? The Turks are not planning a crusade against Rome?”
She tried to nod her head, but could not move. She opened her mouth to assure him, but her tongue would not speak. She saw fire flashing from the mouths of cannon, heard screams, saw the struggles of drowning horses and the stillness of floating bodies in a red sea. Kemal would indeed bring fire to Christendom. He would destroy many ships and siege cities with his blockade. She saw hundreds of Christian sailors on their knees begging him for mercy. When?
Three years.