The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

Father Benignus had handed the reins of his horse off to a stammering youth, who held its bridle while the hooded man swung awkwardly from the saddle to the bed of the wagon and, bending double, vanished inside the shelter.

“Stay!” Rage and Sorrow sat beside the wagon, but they looked ready to spring into action. As Alain scrambled up onto the tailgate, he heard the startled murmurs of the bandits in camp. Everyone was watching, as wolves watched an injured elk, waiting for its thrashing to subside enough that they can dart in to tear out its throat.

He ducked in after Father Benignus.

“I knew you would come.” Father Benignus had his back to Alain as he lit a candle and dropped the amulet into a bowl filled with a clear liquid. It hissed, and the liquid boiled and subsided, leaching a strong vinegar smell. “The others fear me, as they should. You should, too.”

The tent vaulted just high enough that he could stand upright in the center of the wagon. The flame flickered uneasily as the man unwrapped the veil and took off his broad-brimmed hat. He had long, greasy hair that might once have been blond. That much Alain glimpsed in the dim light before Benignus turned to face him and sank down on a narrow bed, exhausted.

He was horribly disfigured. Lesions had eaten away half his face, exposing bone. His eyes wept pus, and sores had long since eaten his ears.

“Are you a leper?” Alain shuddered. Leprosy passed from one man to another by means of contamination. It would strike any man. It was God’s worst punishment. Yet having come so far Alain would not retreat.

Because Father Benignus had no lips it seemed that he smiled all the time, a skeleton’s grimace. His teeth were good, strong and white; he was only missing two.

“I am no leper.” Benignus said mockingly in his soft voice. “I am least among men, but no leper. I am the one so easily forgotten even by those who used and discarded me. So easily forgotten by pawns and biscops alike, for you were only a pawn, as I was, weren’t you? Although Father Agius kept you close. Did he pollute you with his heresy?”

Alain recognized his voice, even distorted as it was by his affliction. He remembered pale blue eyes.

“I know who you are. I called you Brother Willibrod once. You were a cleric in the retinue of Biscop Antonia. She set you and the others to binding and working. You made the amulets that protected Lady Sabella’s forces from the spell laid on humankind by the glance of the guivre’s eye. They hoped to win the battle against King Henry.”

“But Father Agius killed the guivre! All our work for nothing! So we were abandoned, all of us who had poisoned ourselves doing God’s work! All but Heribert, who never soiled himself with binding and working! We were left to the mercy of the sisters of St. Benigna who locked us in an attic and left us to die!” Willibrod shook all over, then gagged, and reached for a flask hung from a nail pounded into the frame onto which the tent’s fabric had been nailed. His palsied hand could not grip the leather flask.

Alain stepped forward, unhooked the flask, and took out the stopper. Willibrod drank nothing stronger than vinegar, apparently, tinged with a scent so sharp it gave Alain a headache. He handed the flask to the other man. Even so, Willibrod could not hold it because he trembled so violently, and the flask tipped out of his hands and spilled onto the floorboards.

Gasping and choking, Willibrod cried out in pain as liquid pooled over the wood and began to soak in. He flung himself onto the floor and writhed there, licking it up like a frantic dog.

Alain dropped down beside him.

“Don’t touch me!” Willibrod jerked back from Alain’s hand only to slam into the bed’s wooden frame, but the impact had no effect on him.

“I pray you, Brother. Let me.” Alain salvaged the flask; perhaps a third of it had leaked out. The liquid stung his fingers and he winced at its touch.

Willibrod yanked the flask out of his hand and set it to his lips, gulping desperately while Alain hastily wiped his fingers on his leggings. The vinegar was raising blisters on his skin.

“What are you poisoning yourself with?” He blew on his hand, but blisters kept popping up where the liquid had burned him. Willibrod lowered the flask. His hands had stopped shaking, but his face was as ghastly as ever, his mouth caught in its eternal grimace. “The distillation of life,” he whispered, eyes lolling back like one drugged. “The souls of dying men. It makes a strong potion.” Had the pain of his affliction driven him insane? Yet the expression in his eyes had an awful clarity, the look of a man who knows he has done something so horrible that he can never atone for it.

“Kill me,” Willibrod begged hoarsely, voice barely audible.

The aroma of the vinegar and the putrid smell of sores and lesions stifled, as choking as smoke. Alain coughed, fighting for breath, and took a step closer to the other man just as a shudder passed through Willibrod’s frame, a palsy that made his body jerk and tremble. Alain bent to hold him down, but before he could touch him, Willibrod’s eyes shifted; the stark agony of his gaze dulled and his expression changed in the same manner that the sky changes color when a cloud covers the sun.

“Stand back!” The stink of his breath startled Alain badly—it was like the stench that rises off the battlefield, attracting carrion crows. It was the reek of decay and despair, yet he spoke like a triumphant general. “Do not touch me! Why have you come here?”

Outside, Rage barked twice, then fell silent.

Alain stepped backward to touch the entrance flap. “You are not Willibrod any longer.”

“Willibrod died in the attic under the care of the sisters of St. Benigna. Life did not leave him entirely, but he died nevertheless.” That death’s-head grin did not falter. “Now I am Father Benignus, taking my revenge on the world.”

“You are taking your revenge on folk who never did you any wrong. Folk who had nothing to do with the pain inflicted on you by Biscop Antonia and Lady Sabella. The evil done to you does not justify the evil you do to innocent others.”

“What makes you think I believe in right and wrong any longer? How did God reward my loyalty or the faithful service of my fellow clerics? Now I have power, and I will use it as the whim takes me. I do not serve either God or the Enemy. I serve only myself.” The potion had renewed him. He rose, looking vigorous and unexpectedly powerful, if no less hideous. “Are you with me, Brother Alain? Or do you prefer to die and let your soul feed mine?”

2

LIATH swept through the entrance and stopped short. It wasn’t only the run from Sorgatani’s wagon that made her heart race. What she saw made her tremble with anger and apprehension. The tent lay empty, its disarray evidence of the hasty departure of Sanglant and his retinue. He was gone, gone, gone. How could he be so stupid?

A bowllike lamp placed on a closed chest kindled with the force of her feelings. Flame sheeted the surface of the oil.