The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“We stayed at a hostel where Wolfh—where Brother Lupus had stayed many years before.”

“He traveled in Qahirah before?”

“So he said. I don’t know why. The innkeeper recognized him. He had done the innkeeper a favor many years ago, so we were well treated and given a splendid feast that night and a palatable wine, as much as we could drink. That night I had to rise to use the necessary. When returning to my bed, I happened to overhear a conversation between Brother Marcus and Sister Meriam. Marcus no longer trusted Brother Lupus. He thought Brother Lupus had spent too long in Prince Sanglant’s company and seemed unwilling to return to the fold. Sister Anne had commanded that Brother Lupus be sent back to her once we located the crown which lies beyond the old ruins of Kartiako. It was the next morning that we discovered he was gone. Perhaps he overheard their conversation as well. Perhaps he knew they were suspicious of him, and so he fled.”

“If so, it seems their suspicions were correct. Wolfhere.” He savored the name as he might a sweet wine. “It seems that the king’s distrust of him was deserved.”

So spoke the man who had, according to Hathui, corrupted the king by insinuating a daimone into his body! Zacharias held his tongue. It was all he could do not to blurt out the accusation just to see Hugh’s reaction, but instinct saved him. Hugh was not Bulkezu but something different, better or worse he could not tell.

“Are you a mathematicus?” he asked instead. “Can you teach me now that I no longer travel with Brother Marcus? He promised that I would receive teaching if I joined his cause.”

“Is that your wish, Brother Zacharias? To receive teaching?”

“It is! More than anything!”

“Yet you have not told me what you know of Prince Sanglant. And of an Eagle whose name is Hathui. You spoke her name while you slept. What do you know of her? Is it possible you have seen her? She was once King Henry’s trusted counselor, but rumor has it she murdered Helmut Villam after a lover’s quarrel and fled in disgrace.”

How difficult it was to remain silent! But Zacharias held his tongue. He struggled and writhed in his heart, but he held his tongue.

“A man who brought me information about this Eagle, Hathui, would be accepted as a trustworthy member of my household. Such a man could expect to receive training in any craft his heart desired. Even as a mathematicus. For I am one such. I could take him on as a discipla. I could teach him how to weave the crowns, and much more besides.”

At the price of betraying his sister.

Hadn’t he once said: “I will do anything for the person who will teach me”?

He shut his eyes, and held his tongue, although he knew his silence betrayed him. Where desire and loyalty warred, loyalty won, and he possessed no glib words to worm his way out of this confrontation. He had probably lost the one thing he desired above all else—that he might learn the secrets of the heavens—and yet it mattered not. He had left Hathui behind, but he would never betray her.

Never.

“Ah,” said Hugh. “I will leave you to think it over.”

He stoppered the inkhorn, cleaned the quill, and tidied up his writing things before he left. In his place, Eigio returned, blowing out the candle before he lay down to sleep.

In that darkness Zacharias smiled to discover what blossomed unexpectedly in his heart. Peace.

Hathui had accused him of never being content, but he was content now. He had saved Elene’s life despite his fear. He had stood his ground in honor of the bond between him and Hathui. Weren’t these the actions of a good man? A decent man? A courageous man?

In the morning, Eigio propped him up against the wall and he was delighted to discover that he could use his arms well enough to spoon gruel into his own mouth. He was ravenous. He had lost so much weight that his body seemed skin stretched over bone, and when he tried to stand, his legs hadn’t the strength to hold him. Only a handful of days ago he could not swallow or speak. If he ate and rested, he would recover his strength.

The afternoon’s meal of gruel and wine made him unaccountably sleepy. He drifted in and out of a doze as his skin burned and chilled at intervals and his tongue seemed swollen, choking him. Night came and departed while he napped and woke, head cloudy, hands tingling. Light returned, and he lay on his bed and struggled to move, but his limbs felt as heavy as stone, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Presbyter Hugh appeared suddenly, splendid in court robes and a scarlet cape that rippled like water every time he turned.

“Give him the antidote, and then bring him,” he said, and left.

Eigio poured sour wine down his throat. Half of it spilled down his cheeks and trickled along his jaw, but the servingman wiped him up and clad him in a plain shift, the kind of shroud a poor man would be buried in.

He couldn’t move.

Servants arrived and rolled him onto a stretcher. In this manner he jounced down the hall, down stairs, up and down and in such a twisting, turning, crazy route that he became dizzy. Bile burned at the back of his throat, but he could not swallow it down or force it up. He could not even blink, but must stare up at plain and fancy woodwork both, and once a stretch of bright blue sky, until the jostling brought him along an arcade open to the air and surrounded by an ocean of murmuring water. Yet these were the mutterings of humankind, because the servants bore him past multitudes whose faces flashed past as quickly as those of the painted cherubs laughing and weeping above him among the vaults.

A huge crowd had gathered, but where, and why, he did not know.

They crossed under a lintel and came into a space absolutely packed with women and men and rank with their perfumes and sweat and the headache-inducing bite of incense rolling in clouds past his streaming eyes. The ceiling flew away from him, arching up to an impossible height from which stared solemn angels and gloomy saints with huge eyes and glowing hands and heads.

Had he died at last and arrived at the Chamber of Light?

Whispers teased his ears as the servants bore him through the crowd.