The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“They say he’s possessed by the Enemy.”

Male voices rose in unison.

The angel spoke to the chosen one:

Rejoice!

Receive the light for the glory of God illuminates you.

Rejoice!

A dome opened above him, the gulf of air so vast that he could scarcely see the painted figures gazing benignly down upon him, who was smallest and least. Folks gaped at him but his bearers did not falter and he was borne forward under the dome and crossed under a lower arch to the apse, where the crowd thinned and he was set down in the midst of a company of brightly dressed nobles. One man stood with his back to Zacharias, his figure limned by the light streaming through a tall window. He turned. The sun dazzled Zacharias’ eyes as the man knelt beside him. He was clad in gold, and the gold cloth was sewn with gems; a heavy gold crown sat on his head and a gold torque encircled his throat. He had brown hair chased with silver and the calm, handsome, bearded face of a man in his middle years. Truly, he was as glorious as the sun.

Floating above, faces swam in and out of Zacharias’ sight: a pretty young woman crowned and robed in splendor equal to that of the kneeling man; Presbyter Hugh; a woman robed in white with a delicate gold torque at her throat and an embroidered golden cap concealing her hair.

The choir finished. Silence trembled beneath the gulf of air.

The crowned man drew a red gillyflower across Zacharias’ lips and after that a tickling branch of yew.

“If God favor this day,” he said in a powerful voice that surely carried all the way to the back, “if the Lord and Lady look kindly upon the birth today of this new Holy Empire, I pray They will heal this poor unfortunate. Let my kiss be for him the breath of life.”

He bent down and kissed Zacharias on the lips. He reeked of a heady perfume so strong that it tickled in Zacharias’ nostrils and made him, all at once, unbidden, unexpected, and just as the crowned man sat back, sneeze.

An audible gasp burst from the assembly.

“Catch it! Catch it!” cried a woman excitedly. “The demon has been expelled!”

Zacharias burned all over as he stared up at the crowned man. Ai, God, surely it could only be one man, so glorious and so proud. The man whom Hathui respected above all others. Her king.

He struggled and found that his limbs worked after all. The crowned man rose to his feet, and Zacharias got his elbows under him and with immense effort, straining, levered himself up.

“Your Majesty!” he said hoarsely.

“He speaks! He speaks!”

“A miracle! The Emperor has healed him!”

All through the cathedral voices drowned him in a thunder of exclamations and joyful weeping. King Henry stared down at Zacharias without expression, his gaze that same calm facade, but suddenly he noticed that the king’s eyes seemed first green and then blue and then green again as though he were both himself and some other creature entirely.

Hathui’s anguished testimony crowded back into his mind, for with his excellent memory he had certainly forgotten nothing she had said to Prince Sanglant, although it was difficult to think with such a roar around him and so many bodies pressing forward to look at him, at the miracle. He was the cripple the new emperor had healed.

“Take him,” said Hugh’s voice, almost lost in the uproar.

The stretcher rocked and he rose into the air, reaching, grasping, gasping.

“Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”

They shoved past the yammering hordes and hurried out through a side door and then by halls and courtyards heedless of his pleading to be let down, to return to the king who was not king any longer but now emperor. All that way he heard, fading, the noise of the multitude and, in counterpoint, a hymn.

Sing a new song of praise!

Lay the old man aside and take on the new.

Glory! Glory! Glory!

They came at last to a silent chamber where sunlight streamed through open windows to illuminate murals painted on the wall. They set him down on a pallet in a corner behind two handsome chairs placed on a low dais, drew a curtain, and left him alone except for two guards at the door.

There he wept, but for what reason he was not sure.