“You’re forgettin’ the bears.”
Chapter Seven
Ezekiel Angleton had slept poorly.
Even before that whistling pagan oaf Obadiah Dogsbody had blundered back empty-handed, Ezekiel’s evening had been haunted by strange visions. It had been a long, hard ride from Philadelphia, sharing stale beds with Obadiah in ordinaries along the way, so he’d curled up in his cloak on a bed of leaves and dozed off. He’d slept fitfully, but he’d been interrupted by strange dreams.
He had dreamed he was someone else, or perhaps something else, and that thing was locked in a body that was as unfamiliar to it as it was to Ezekiel. This was just like the dreams that had trampled through his restless nights on the hard ride south.
On those previous nights he had dreamed he ran over hills and through forests, encountering no one. Ezekiel had told himself the strange fluidity of the movement and the constant slapping of branches on his dream-face were reflections of his state of mind, dream-mirrors of the uncertain wilderness in which his soul wandered, until he could capture the witchy-eyed girl and end her blasphemy against the Penn family name.
Last night, dozing beside his fire in the forest and waiting for Obadiah to bring him the girl, the dreams had returned. Moreover, they had become prophetic. In fragmented images split up by his surfacing to the waking world for air he had seemed to follow his servant Obadiah Dogsbody upon the slopes of Calhoun Mountain. There he’d seen Obadiah drink himself stupid and then release the girl, so Ezekiel had not truly been surprised when Obadiah had returned to camp alone.
It had been a harsh disappointment, but a hurt that brought its own balm. Knowing his dreams had been the vehicle of prophecy thrilled Ezekiel Angleton, and he thought of the next part of his evening’s visions, in which he’d found the Penn girl and her Appalachee beau and had attacked them, wrestling the man to the ground with his bare hands. Surely, this was a great portent for this morning’s venture: as Obadiah had lost the girl, Ezekiel would find her again.
But what did it mean that in his dream the cracker lad had arisen with a handful of fire like the cherub sealing off the gate of Eden, and had struck Ezekiel in his dream-face, wounding him gravely? Ezekiel rubbed his cheek at the memory of the dream-pain, searing and intense, and of the smoke that poured out of his burning dream-flesh.
Was the Appalachee lad Ezekiel’s death? Did his hand hold for Ezekiel the fires of Hell? Did God have no grace to pour down on him?
At the least, the dream contained both a promise and a warning, and Ezekiel would take great care.
The Philadelphia Blues had found him early this morning; they, too, had ridden hard from Philadelphia, and only Ezekiel’s earlier start had gotten him to Nashville one day ahead. He had been deep in prayer and the Psalms in the small canvas tent he had made Obadiah pitch for him when a drumming of hooves had preceded the arrival of men on horseback.
Ezekiel had emerged from the tent, feeling the pleasant stretching burn of legs unkinking after spiritual exercise. His heart struggled with a more puzzled feeling. Wrestling through the strange images of his dreams, he had hounded on their trail through verse after verse, in Isaiah and Daniel and Zephaniah, and finally he had struck upon the eighty-second Psalm.
Captain Sir Daniel Berkeley had pounded into view at the head of the Blues astride his enormous gray horse. “You’re fast, Parson.” He swung easily to the ground.
Captain Berkeley was tall and muscular, with a high forehead and aquiline nose framed dramatically by his glossy black perruque. Berkeley must be in his mid-forties, Ezekiel guessed. His Imperial Majesty Thomas Penn had elevated him to the captaincy of the Blues immediately following his own coronation nearly fifteen years earlier, at the same time he had elevated Ezekiel.
The years since then had mostly been spent in the saddle, either traveling with Thomas or riding on his errand. Berkeley didn’t show the years or the miles. He was lean and hard, he breathed through flared nostrils, and his eyes stared everywhere they looked.
The captain rode behind Ezekiel now on the huge gray horse of which he was so proud, Obadiah following him, and then the Philadelphia Blues, in Indian file.
The Imperial House Light Dragoons were the emperor’s personal troops; they were his bodyguard in war and on long journeys, and his special agents at other times. They were mounted gunmen, and each was armed with a brace of long horse pistols, large-bored and designed to kill men in single, accurate shots, as well as the longer Paget carbine. Strapped behind his saddle, each man carried a box of paper cartridges, prepared in advance to speed reloading time. In addition, they carried swords. By tradition, they rode under the emperor’s banner when in his company, and otherwise had no insignia, being recognizable only by their blue uniforms, simple and sturdy for the road, with a dress set embroidered elaborately in gold and buttoned with ivory disks. Even their captain wore no special marker of rank; his men knew who he was. The Blues wore tricorner hats against the rain and long riding coats against the October chill.
I have said, Ye are gods, said the Psalmist.
Was that a message for Ezekiel, too, as his dreams were? Was it as a god that Ezekiel ran through the forests of the New World in his dream, battling Appalachee angels of fire? All of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. Surely, a god need not fear death. Nor need a god fear failure; perhaps the Psalmist only congratulated Ezekiel on his work in the service of God, and promised success. And yet the Psalmist warned the gods that they should die like men.
What gods were these?
No, Ezekiel thought. Ye shall be as the gods, knowing good and evil. That was in the Bible too, but it was a lie in the mouth of the serpent, it was false Ophidian doctrine. God was god and man was man and the only bridge between them was God’s grace, which was not for all of the children of Eve and which could not be had by any of the Soulless, the Children of the Serpent.
Ezekiel frowned. Whatever it was he had dreamed of being in his forest-running, Appalachee-battling dreams, it wasn’t a god.
On the highway they had ridden two abreast, out the Charlotte Pike Gate in a light drizzle of cold rain. At the turn-off to Calhoun Mountain—a faint path indicated to them by an old man passing by with two oxen yoked to a dilapidated wagon, but only after payment of a gold sovereign—they had been forced by the narrower path to collapse into a single file.
Ezekiel no longer had his compass of the day before, nor all the materials to recreate it—he bit back his tongue from cursing Obadiah again—but he knew the way to Calhoun Mountain now, and he knew the Elector was hiding Mad Hannah’s Hell-spawned, Ophidian child.
The Elector would be made to give her up.
Ezekiel rode first, and he abandoned his anonymity of the day before in favor of the black and white tabard with the hammer and nail emblazoned on its chest. The insignia marked him as a priest, or, as he preferred to think of himself, a knight, riding to holy war under the banner of St. Martin. Martin Luther himself had given it its military character. After he dethroned the tyrant Cetes from the Lord Mayoralty of Wittenberg, he had created the Order, appointed its first Father-General, and directed it to act in defense of the children of Eve.
God had given dominion over the earth to Adam and Eve and therefore to their children, the Book of Genesis clearly taught. That meant, as St. Martin had clarified in his Ninety-Five Theses, that it was an unnatural and unholy inversion of God’s design for any child of Eve to be ruled by any creature other than another child of Eve. The Soulless could not be allowed to rule over the Souled, and so the first and irrevocable mandate of every member of the Order everywhere was to remove the so-called Firstborn from positions of dominion. St. Martin would not have them rule, in the church or in the palace.
Even when Penn blood coursed in their veins.
Especially when they were Penns.
Ezekiel had the blight-faced little abomination holed up now, and he felt great satisfaction at the prospect of her imminent capture. And if she moved again, his dreams would tell him.
They rode up the ridge through the soft rustle of drifting leaves, Obadiah occasionally bursting into snatches of whistled tune and then each time cutting himself off; Ezekiel recognized the songs as lewd ones. Obadiah was a brute and an infidel pagan, but he was useful—he ran errands and he was dependable muscle when force was called for.
He also stood as constant evidence to Ezekiel of the Fall, and of the imperfection of the children of Eve. He fought for them not because they were more virtuous or more noble than the Eldritch, but because that was the commandment of Ezekiel’s God.
Also, Obadiah’s presence reminded Ezekiel that even Christendom held many souls yet to come to Christ.
The Blues were more disciplined than Obadiah; they knew they were in territory that was in hostile hands, if not in the hands of outright enemies, and they rode in silence, watching the woods.
At the top of the ridge, they reached the mouth of a narrow canyon that cut up through the crown of the hill and led, the ox-driver had said, to the homes on the top of Calhoun Mountain; Ezekiel reined in his horse.
Ten Appalachee men in long hunting shirts, fringed jackets, and floppy hats lounged about the mouth of the canyon. More stood in the canyon and others likely lurked at the top. Ezekiel searched for the faces of Shadrach Calhoun and the other men who had ambushed him in the woods, laughing as they forced him to recite scripture and undress, but didn’t see them.
He shook his head; he was not here to avenge his own harms, however egregious they were. Ezekiel closed his eyes and tried to remember last night’s dreams—he didn’t think he’d seen this place. Presumably the spot where he would catch the girl was further up.
Captain Berkeley eased up to Ezekiel’s side. “Be wary of these highlanders, Parson. They dress themselves like vagrants, but they are famous shots, and they are not arranged so casually as they may appear.”
It irritated Ezekiel to be called parson, which was not his title, since he was not a parish priest, and which was instead a deliberately barbed reminder that Berkeley was indifferent to his authority. Still, he looked again and saw Berkeley was right; each of the Appalachee men held a long rifle and many had a second close to hand, or a pistol tucked into a belt. All appeared to lie casually and relaxed, but each sat on or beside some boulder, stump, or crack that could provide cover from return fire.
“I see,” he murmured. The heretic traitor Thalanes had done a despicable thing in concealing Mad Hannah’s child, but he had hidden her well and in a place that was stoutly defended. Ezekiel was duly impressed. Impressed, but not daunted.
He was a paladin, and he rode under the banner of a crusade.
Ezekiel moved forward a few feet, to try to give the Blues behind him room to come up, but there was no clearing at the foot of the canyon, and most of the Dragoons continued to sit in the saddle in single file. This also left them in a tactical position that was less than ideal, since it would force them to attack the defile one at a time, if this meeting came to blows.
“Be wary,” Captain Berkeley repeated. “God’s will no doubt shall come to pass, but there’s no need for us to tempt fate with imprudence.”
Ezekiel nodded, then cleared his throat and politely removed his tall black hat to address the Calhouns.
“Git the hell off my land!” one of the Calhouns snapped.
Ezekiel focused on the speaker. He was an old man, standing about halfway up the draw, with a cragged face under a blaze of snow-white hair. He wore all black and had just one arm. He was the only one of the Appalachee men who appeared to be unarmed.
“Pardon me?” Ezekiel called.
“Youins are foreigners, armed and trespassin’! I repeat myself, git the hell off my land afore I decide to exercise my natural liberties and eject you by the seat of your too-tight britches!”
Ezekiel wasn’t surprised to find that the crackers weren’t predisposed to cooperate. That was fine with him; he had come prepared to cajole and bully.
“You must be the Elector Calhoun!” Ezekiel called. “I’m Father Ezekiel Angleton of the Order of St. Martin, confessor to His Imperial Majesty Thomas Penn. This is Captain Sir Daniel Berkeley of the Imperial House Light Dragoons, and those are the Dragoons themselves on the trail behind me.”
“The only man I e’er called ‘father’ is buried on this here mountain, you jackanapes!” Calhoun shouted back. “Your precious St. Martin was a robber, a lecher, and a drunk, and as far that poltroon’s rank goes, I am, as it happens, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Calhoun of the First Appalachee Volunteers.
“I stood tall against Wallenstein’s Germans and Algonks in fifty-five and sixty, when I don’t reckon either one of you was even born! Hell, for that matter, I don’t reckon you’s born when I fought Washington and Pontiac in sixty-three, and if you’s alive when I personally drove the Spanish out of Natchez in seventy-nine, then you must a been tiny little shits, still wipin’ your noses and your asses on your mammas’ frilly skirts!”
Ezekiel realized he’d backed his horse away a step under the verbal onslaught. He urged the beast forward again.
“I have an Imperial Warrant,” he called, “for the arrest of a girl name Sarah Penn. You may know her as Sarah Calhoun. We aren’t actively seeking trouble, and expect to receive your assistance in locating Miss Calhoun.”
“Iffen you reckon I’m fixin’ to surrender to you fellers anybody at all as goes by the last name of Calhoun, you can jest piss right off and die!”
“Even if the girl isn’t really a Calhoun?” Ezekiel called.
The Elector ignored his question. “As to your havin’ an imperial warrant, I b’lieve you’ll find you left the highway several miles back—this is Calhoun land, and your warrant ain’t worth the breath it’d take you to read it!”
Ezekiel frowned. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He knew he was in no position to mount an actual attack here, but he’d expected the Blues to have more weight as a threat than they appeared to have.
“Easy, Father,” Berkeley warned him, and it almost warmed Ezekiel’s heart to hear his proper form of address in the captain’s mouth. “If we are to fight these men, we must choose a better battleground. This is terrible positioning, and the cards do not favor us today.”
The cards? Ezekiel sighed.
“Technically the warrant is, of course, only executable on Imperial land, you’re correct, and the emperor respects your liberties,” he called to the Elector, trying to mollify him before the hammer blow. He was lying; the emperor acted off Imperial land as often as he could get away with it. That was what the Imperial Foresters were for, and the Philadelphia Blues, and that didn’t even begin to take into account the Pacification of the Ohio. “Of course, he’s also your emperor, and he expects that in return for his acknowledgement of your liberties, you’ll cooperate with the exercise of his power. Give us the child Sarah, and there’s no need for any violence.”
The craggy face broke open in wild, high-pitched laughter that drew hearty chuckles from the other Calhoun men and went on too long, leaving Ezekiel feeling nervous. Abruptly, the laughter stopped—
the Elector raised his one arm above his head—
every Calhoun rifleman suddenly pulled up his gun, and a bristling briar patch of firearms stared down at Ezekiel Angleton and the Blues.
“You forget yourself, Angleton!” the Elector shouted. “I don’t need no civics instruction from a whelp like you, I was there in eighty-four! I signed the Compact myself with the one arm George Washington left me, and I know good and damn well exactly what the Imperial nonsense is all about!”
“Blazes, Parson,” Captain Berkeley muttered. “What are you thinking?”
“I didn’t sign the Compact to take John Penn as my king, you ignoramus! I signed it to tell him iffen he ever got too big for his britches, we’d throw him on out and elect us someone new! As for Thomas Penn, Hell, I voted against that Chaldee numbskull!”
“Are you repudiating your emperor?” The constitutional talk left Ezekiel irritated, especially in light of the assault he’d suffered the night before. “Are you telling me you plan to invoke an election?”
“As to expectations,” Calhoun shouted again, “yours and little Tommy Penn’s, you can expect that when I lower my arm, every one of my boys is gonna shoot you. You can expect that some of youins’ll escape, and you can expect that some of us’ll likely die in the return fire. But you can be damned sure that St. Martin Luther’ll end the day down one father, and the emperor down one cap’n.”
Ezekiel gnashed his teeth. His horse fretted beneath him and he jammed his hat back onto his head.
“Take all the time you want to chew it over,” the Elector called. “Only recognize that I ain’t got no Aaron up here to prop my one arm up, and these wild-eyed sons of Jacob’d be more’n happy to shoot themselves a few Amalekites!”
“About face!” Captain Berkeley called. “We’re finished here!” he snapped, and pushed past Obadiah to lead his men back down the ridge.
Ezekiel took one long look at the Calhoun riflemen and the mountain above them. He felt anger, but he wasn’t discouraged. Somewhere up there, he knew he would encounter Sarah Calhoun and her young highland friend, and he expected to defeat them. He only needed to understand what the dream-fire was, and then he would be prepared for battle.
Laughter from the ravine followed him down as he pushed his horse to catch up to Captain Berkeley.
“Captain,” he began, attracting the man’s attention by calling over his shoulder, “thank you for your wise counsel and support. Let’s discuss the possibilities of laying siege to this mountain.”
* * *
Cal held the spoonful of moonshine with a pinch of gunpowder in it in his left hand. In his right he held the Elector’s rifle, primed and cocked but not loaded. He brought the firing pan of the rifle close to the spoon and angled the gun to direct the sparks.
“What are you doing?” Thalanes leaned over Cal’s shoulder.
Sarah was content to sit a couple of paces away and not too close to the still, in case anything exploded.
Cal squeezed the trigger.
Poomf!
The sparks lit the gunpowder and the moonshine both, and Cal was suddenly holding a spoonful of blue flame. “I’m jest proofin’ the moonshine.” He held up the burning spoon. “See? Burnin’ blue, moonshine’s true.”
He shook the burning moonshine out onto the cave floor and toed sand over it to snuff out the flame.
“I thought you were New Light, like your cousins,” the little monk said.
Cal put the spoon away. “Jest ’cause I’m New Light don’t mean I can’t know how to proof moonshine.”
The three of them were in the Crooked Man’s Cave, where they had spent the last hours of the night. It was a shallow depression in the limestone, no more than five or six of Calvin’s paces deep. There were dirty blankets in the corner, some obscene chalk sketches on the stone, and a rough bit of wood sculpture in the back that looked vaguely like an ugly old man with a hunched back and twisted legs. Under the sculpture lay bits of tobacco ash and shattered glass that might be the remains of sacrifices.
And there was a still, consisting mostly of a copper pot and a wooden barrel, with a couple of glass bottles’ worth of genuine corn likker that Cal had just judged to be good.
“So I guess you’ll bring along the moonshine,” Thalanes concluded.
“Yeah, I reckon I will.” Cal tapped the cork back into the bottle and slid the bottle into his pack. “Iffen we don’t want to drink it ourselves, somebody else will, and we can always trade. Lessen you’ve got a problem with that.”
“Don’t you feel like it’s theft?” Thalanes asked.
Cal shook his head. “This cave is on Calhoun land, and this still is a Calhoun still, and besides, I done these boys plenty of favors when they needed them. Now I reckon they can do me one.”
“Ain’t you gonna tell us where we’re a-goin’?” Sarah asked. “I don’t reckon you’re fixin’ to live the rest of your life in some cracker pagan temple cave.”
“Aren’t. You should practice your Penn’s English,” Thalanes advised her. “Not only will people take you more seriously, outside of Appalachee, but you’ll be less conspicuous.”
“Ain’t that somethin’ of a contradiction?” Sarah defied him.
“Nothin’ wrong with the word ain’t,” Calvin grumbled.
Thalanes hummed cheerfully.
The three of them had slipped down Calhoun Mountain in the rainy night, carrying packs of necessaries, wrapped in wool coats (even the monk had borrowed one), and shod in walking shoes—moccasins, in fact, Indian-style but stitched by the nimble fingers of Calhoun women.
There had been Imperial soldiers on the track, on the highway and in the woods, men with long blue cloaks and blue tricorner hats, but after rubbing a little dirt on each of their cheeks the monk had whispered “oculos obscuro” and advised them to walk casually and quietly past. None of the soldiers batted an eyelash. Sarah felt like laughing out loud as she passed within five feet of two guards standing on the edge of the Charlotte Pike, directly in front of them, and they continued their empty men’s talk about horses and women the entire time.
The men were the Philadelphia Blues, Thalanes had explained as they walked, the Imperial House Light Dragoons. The emperor’s personal elite military unit, his bodyguard, the men who undertook his most sensitive errands. When her father had been the Imperial Consort, they had ridden with him. Sarah had felt uneasy just thinking about it.
Calvin had brought the three of them to the Crooked Man’s Cave, where they’d gotten a few hours of sleep and acquired some moonshine. Now, in the gray of the morning, they shouldered their packs again.
“Farewell, cave,” Thalanes said as they stepped out. “You’ve been good to us, despite your occupant.”
Cal shrugged. “In these hills, the line between a haint and a saint can git so fine you don’t even see it.”
Sarah’s pack held a little clothing and a bedroll, and she carried a gift from the Elector in the shape of a new walking staff, with a crisp, delicate horse’s head carved into the top of it. “White ash,” he had said to her in his gruffest voice at their parting. “It’s good against evil spirits.”
“The horse for fast travel?” she had asked.
He’d nodded. “And for the knight on the chessboard, who jumps o’er his enemies without stoppin’.”
“You might could a jest carved me a bird,” she had teased him. “Then I’d a flew.”
“I would a done so, child,” his eyes had twinkled at her, “only I worried the short-legged priest wouldn’t e’er a kept up.”
Cal was burdened with the bulk of their camp gear: canvas sheets that could be made easily into a tent, Calvin’s bedroll, a pot, some rope, flint and steel, a little dry tinder. They each had a waterskin, but they carried very little food: a bag of bonny clabber, a wrapped parcel of griddle cakes, and some strips of air-dried beef. And now two bottles of moonshine liquor.
Cal also carried his tomahawk and lariat, strapped to his belt with thin rawhide ties, his boot knife, and a gift from the Elector that Sarah knew he had found extravagant: the Elector’s own Kentucky rifle, shiny and worn but perfect in its fringed buckskin sheath slung over Calvin’s shoulder. Iron Andy had taken it down from over the fireplace himself and pressed it into Calvin’s hands, whispering something to Cal that Sarah hadn’t heard, but that had resulted in him blushing. Along with the rifle, the Elector had given his grandson the related tools, powder and bullets, and a bag that clinked mysteriously before disappearing into Calvin’s pack.
Other than the borrowed coat, the monk had left as he had arrived, carrying nothing but a worn old satchel, of the contents of which Sarah was completely ignorant.
She was also ignorant of their destination. This left her at the mercy of the meddling little priest, but this morning the Elector had insisted, and she had given in, feeling she was doing her duty to the man who had raised her. The night before last Calvin had fended off the clay-men, but not without some injury, and she no longer felt safe on Calhoun Mountain. Also, she doubted her own ability to escape the forces that pursued her without assistance, or with Cal’s help alone. The little monk was a clever wizard, and she resolved to get him to teach her how he did it. She could always slip away later, if she found an opportunity.
As long as Thalanes was holding out on her, though, she felt no obligation to be forthcoming with him. She hadn’t told him, and, at her urging, Cal had also kept silent, about the claylike faceless men that had attacked them. She couldn’t put her finger on a good reason why she should withhold this information, only that it pleased her to do so. Pride, maybe—she didn’t want it known that she had put herself and Calvin in as much danger as she had. Sheer mule-headed stubbornness. And a will to pay the monk back, tit for tat, for his close mouth. They had told him about Obadiah Dogsbody and his men, and the hectoring that afforded him seemed to satisfy his yearning to indulge in I-told-you-so, at least for the present.
The best thing about being on the road was that, as long as they were walking, the monk couldn’t crowd too close.
They pushed over the top of a low ridge, feet plowing furrows in the drifts of fallen leaves, and Sarah realized where they were headed. “You’re takin’ us to the Trace, ain’t you?” When Thalanes continued his introspective humming, she tried again. “You’re taking us to the Natchez Trace, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said brightly. “The Imperial Highways are quicker, and so are the rivers, but on the old roads you attract less attention.”
“You attract bandits,” Cal observed doubtfully, “and bears.”
“I’ll be counting on your help against both,” Thalanes said. “The Elector spoke very highly of your shooting.”
“I most gen’rally hit what I aim at,” Cal allowed.
“He’s even better with the tomahawk,” Sarah boasted for him. Cal had been subdued since his failed effort to abduct her and she worried about his morale. “And he’s hell on wheels with the lasso.”
“No wonder the Elector insisted that he accompany us,” the monk said. “Though I suspect it may also have to do with Calvin’s own repeatedly expressed preference.”
Cal just blushed. “It ain’t jest my druthers. The Elector wanted me to keep Sarah safe.”
“Calvin is an interesting name,” Thalanes continued. “You’re named for the French lawyer, I guess? The man who defended John Dee and Giordano Bruno against blasphemy charges?”
“He didn’t reckon a man ought to be killed for disagreein’ with his priest,” Cal muttered. “It’s a common enough name in Appalachee.”
“It’s a fine name,” Thalanes concurred.
“It ain’t…it isn’t just the attention, though, is it?” Sarah pressed. “I mean, in the one day I’ve known you, you’ve changed my face, stared down Shadrach Calhoun, and turned me invisible, so I don’t think you’re worried you might run into that Martinite again on the highway.” She had an idea as to what drove the little man’s thinking, but she wanted him to admit it. “I mean, you’re a wizard.”
“There are darker things on the road than Ezekiel Angleton,” Thalanes replied, and Sarah felt a momentary twitch of guilt wondering whether he already knew, somehow, about their clay attackers, “though you shouldn’t underestimate the Right Reverend Father, either. But you’re right, there are other reasons to be on the old paths.”
Sarah waited, but the monk was silent.
“I’m not a child, you know,” she told him.
He looked startled. “Do you feel that I’m treating you like a child?”
“Like a stupid child.” Her face was hot. “You want me to follow you around, but you won’t tell me why or where, and you hide even the little answers, like why you want to travel on the Natchez Trace, even though it’s lousy with outlaws and we only have the one rifle among the three of us! You can say let no will be coerced until the cows come home, Father, but dragging me around in ignorance and fear is the same thing as telling me what to do.”
The monk stopped mid-stride and they all came to a halt in the leaves; his face looked as if he had been slapped. Sarah had a momentary impulse to apologize, but bit her tongue and defied him with her eyebrows instead.
“You don’t need to fear nothin’, long as I’m here,” Calvin offered. “I got the tomahawk as well as the gun.”
Thalanes shook his head as if he was emerging from under water. “I forget how smart you are. And how well Andrew Calhoun has taught you.” He laughed and shook his head again. “You’re just like your mother.”
“A crazy woman,” Sarah said pointedly. “I see you’ve been attending the Calvin Calhoun school of compliments and gallantry.”
“Hey!” Cal objected.
“The Empress Hannah was never mad.” Thalanes sobered suddenly, and was silent for a moment. “You’re right, of course. Demanding that you act without information and in fear for your lives is no better than coercion. My only defense is that I, too, act out of great fear. Tonight... when I am comfortable that we are well away from prying eyes and curious ears…I’ll tell you where I would like you to go with me.” He sighed wistfully and his eyes twinkled. “I fear Palindres would be disappointed with me. The free will of others is such a fragile thing.”
Sarah felt slightly mollified. “I reckon…I think he’d be proud of you for trying so hard.”
The little monk smiled. “I hope so.” He resumed walking. “As to why I wish to travel on the Trace, I assume you must be baiting me for some reason, since you are an accomplished hexer yourself. Nevertheless, as a sign of good faith, I’ll stick my foot in the trap.
“The Imperial Highways are fast, efficient roads. They’re fast and efficient because they’re made by surveyors, geographers, and engineers, men who take square and compass to a map and plot the shortest distance between two points. The pikes are geometric, abstract and rational, and if you wish to walk from Nashville to Philadelphia taking the smallest possible number of steps, it would be hard to do better than the Imperial Highways.
“The old roads are different. Most of them were old before man saw them.”
“By ‘man,’ do you mean just the sons and daughters of Eve, or are you including the Firstborn?” Sarah asked, mostly to show him that she was paying attention, and that she knew very well what he was talking about.
Thalanes nodded. “I mean the Eldritch, too. All of the children of Adam. The old roads were made by animals, by spirits, by the lines of the land itself, and those movements and those shapes had power in them, and they imbued power into the roads. Adam’s children, coming later, marked the old ways with cairns and standing stones, and celebrated their intersections with henges and temples…and they found that there was power in the roads.”
“Ley lines,” Cal jumped to the point. “They’s a ley line runnin’ down the Trace?”
“Yes,” the monk said. “Sarah, have you ever had occasion to use a ley line? Are you able?”
“I’ve done my fair share of hexing,” she admitted, “but all little things. I’ve never tried to do anything you’d call wizardry, or gramarye, nothing so big that I didn’t have enough power to do it myself. I don’t know if I’m able or not. Besides, you’ve got to be careful. Too much hexing’ll dry your fluids right up.”
“That why all the good hexers are shriveled old women?” Cal asked. “I mean, other’n you, Sarah? Not that they’s so many good hexers, ’cause they ain’t.”
“Magic doesn’t dry up your fluids,” Thalanes said.
“Sure, it does,” Sarah disagreed. “Cal’s right, I ain’t the only hexer on Calhoun Mountain, but the others’re broken old women. Granny Clay used to hex, when she was a girl. I heard she used to turn heads from Louisville to Chattanooga.”
“Then she got old,” Cal said. “And not in a good way.”
The monk nodded. “I don’t disagree that magic is hard on your body, it definitely is. I’m just saying that it doesn’t ‘dry up’ your ‘fluids.’ You see, any magical act takes energy. Really, it’s more basic than that—any act at all, physical, magical, mental, or spiritual, requires some kind of energy. Every person—every animal too, every living thing—has its own supply of magical energy. Call it power, or mana, or chi, or orenda. Ordinary, everyday sorts of spells, like cantrips to mend a pot, or soothe the pain of a burn, or find your way home, can be cast using your own personal reserve. For a lot of magicians, of course, that’s all the magic they can do.”
“And most folks can’t do any magic at all,” Cal observed. “Not for lack of puttin’ pins into dolls or drops of blood into beer, it jest don’t work for lots of people.”
Thalanes nodded agreement. “A wizard’s reserve of energy then recovers with rest and food, just like physical energy. Not just like physical energy, it is physical energy, and casting spells can make you tired and sick. I’m sure you’ve noticed that, haven’t you, Sarah?”
It was Sarah’s turn to nod.
“Pushing yourself too hard magically can age you, too,” the monk said. “And if you wanted to cast a more powerful spell than your own body can power, you would need to use another energy source.”
“Like a ley line,” Cal said. “Seems easy enough.”
“Many things in the natural world generate energy. The tides, the motions of heavenly bodies, births, even some deaths. Some of this energy dissipates, or is consumed, and some of it gets trapped in the ley lines. They are reservoirs of magical power, shaped by the face of the land and the patterns of life upon it. Not just anyone can use them, though. It takes training, and a natural gift, to be able to sense and draw energy from the lines.”
“Not even wizards?” Cal asked. “Not even all wizards can use a ley line?”
“Not even all wizards,” Thalanes agreed. “And those who can, use them with caution. Too much energy running through a wizard is like too much water in a riverbed—it will do damage.”
“Make you tired and sick and old,” Cal inferred.
“And dead,” Thalanes added. “Magical power can kill you as easily as a bolt of lightning. It’s not much different from a bolt of lightning, in fact.”
“So you want to travel on the Natchez Trace because, being a wizard, you’ll have access to magical power,” Sarah concluded.
“And therefore I’m not so very worried about bandits,” Thalanes agreed. “Which is a little foolish of me, because a gang of bandits in any reasonable size would be a serious threat to us. And even a single bandit could take us by surprise and kill one of us before we could stop him, if he wanted. But still.”
“And you’re forgettin’ the bears,” Cal reminded him cheerfully. “And what if they was magical bears, as could use ley lines to find their way home, and mend their bear pots? I still reckon they’s reason to be afeared.”
“There always is,” said the monk. “There always is.”
“The regalia of Cahokia,” Sarah said, drawing her thought out as it occurred to her. “You said they were things of power. What kind of power? The same kind of power as ley lines? Magical power?”
Thalanes looked thoughtful. “I don’t really know,” he eventually told her, and Sarah thought his answer was at least half an evasion.
* * *
“I reckon I should beg your pardon…Father, for somethin’ I’m fixin’ to do,” Cal said, and then his eyes widened. “I reckon I should beg both your pardons.”
It was night, and Calvin had settled them into a sheltered glade far enough from the road to be hidden. He’d lit a fire, laid out bedrolls (no tent necessary, because rain was a stark improbability) and then built the fire while he and Sarah nibbled on griddle cakes (Thalanes had declined) until it had a solid bed of coals.
Sarah lay back on her bedroll, looking at the bright stars of Orion through the leafless branches of the maples, ashes, and dogwoods surrounding them. Her feet hurt. She was accustomed to walking everywhere she went, but she wasn’t accustomed to walking nearly as much as she had this day. The stars gave her some comfort—she’d lost her home and changed her identity, but the stars stayed the same.
What did Calvin have in mind?
“You can call me Thalanes,” the priest said, “though I appreciate the gesture. What is it you intend to do?”
Cal held up a little bag—the pouch the Elector had so discreetly given him—and unknotted its strings, showing his companions that its contents were dully gleaming silver, in the shape of a few rings and coins. “The Elector said he wished he had some silver bullets to give me, but he didn’t, so he made me promise I’d make a few, first fire we laid. Does this…? I don’t wanna hurt you.”
“Then don’t shoot me.” Thalanes smiled. “I’m Firstborn, Calvin Calhoun, not a hobgoblin. Silver irritates my skin, and it may undo my magic, but it won’t burn me at the touch or poison me.”
Cal looked at Sarah expectantly; he wanted her permission, too. “Cal, I’ve been around silver all my life. You think all of the sudden it’s going to kill me from ten feet away?”
Calvin shook his head sheepishly and set to work, filling a small long-handled iron cup with the odd bits of silver and resting it in the coals.
“Well, then, Thalanes,” Sarah called out, “Calvin’s shown us what’s in his secret magical bag. Is it your turn now?” She began her question lightheartedly, but found she really wanted to know. The monk knew all her secrets and she didn’t know his, and she found that hard to bear.
“I wondered why you were lighting such a large fire,” Thalanes said, settling down with his back against a tree trunk. He had no bedroll, and showed no sign at all that he thought he needed one. “You’re a good man, Calvin. Dependable and capable.”
“Hear, hear,” Sarah added, teasing absently. “Calvin for king!”
Calvin blushed furiously. “What’s it like? I mean, to be…?”
“Eldritch? Ophidian? One of Wisdom’s Children? Firstborn? Of the Elder Folk? Serpentspawn? Serpentborn? Snakes? Wigglies? Fey? Elves? Fairies?” Thalanes smiled. “We’re all children of Adam, Cal, and I suspect being me is much like being you, except perhaps for the fact that there are some people in this world who really, really don’t like me just because I’m Firstborn.”
“I been to Raleigh sellin’ cattle and I seen the lights of Atlanta,” Calvin responded. “Turns out they’s folks in this world as really, really don’t like me jest for bein’ Appalachee.”
“Touché,” Thalanes said. “Adam’s children are all hewn rough from the mountain stone. We must crash against each other until we become smooth.”
“I reckon so,” Cal agreed.
“It’s too bad you’re New Light, Cal,” Thalanes said. “Your strong common sense and feel for the reality of people would have made you a good priest. Have you thought about being a lay preacher, at least?”
“A tent and cookies man?” Cal chuckled. “I reckon not.” He poured molten silver into the grip-mold he had and set the cup back in the heat. A few moments later he plunked out a hot silver bullet onto the leather of his pack, and then carefully clipped away the sprue, dropping it gently back in the cup to melt again.
“Cal’s already had a ministry of sorts,” Sarah said.
“No I ain’t.”
“Now you’re jest bein’ modest.” Sarah turned to the monk to explain. “Calvin here was a corn reader.”
“Was,” Cal said immediately. “Was a corn reader. I got the New Light now.”
Thalanes furrowed his brow, then smiled. “You mean…you read to people’s crops?”
“No harm in it, I reckon. I ain’t sayin’ I drove away evil spirits or nothing’. Jest readin’ a little Gospel of John o’er a planted field, and if the farmer wanted to give me a little something for it, who’s the worse?”
“No one’s the worse,” Thalanes agreed. “But you have the New Light now.”
“I reckon I might could make eight bullets, all told,” Cal said, veering back to the subject of the silver, “so let’s be careful about what kind of critter we challenge to a firefight. Also, I’ll keep the rifle loaded with lead, for now, jest in case we see somethin’ worth eatin’.”
“Eight silver musket balls is a lot,” Thalanes said.
“The Elector ain’t a poor man,” Cal answered. “Lord hates a feller as don’t know when to spend his money.”
“As to my bag,” the monk turned to Sarah’s question, “like any wizard worth his salt, I carry a potion when I travel. Or at least, as you might say in Appalachee, I carry the fixin’s.”
“Show us,” Sarah demanded.
“It’s in the nature of a travel potion.” The priest smiled. “I’ll do better than show you—tomorrow morning, before we go, I’ll share it with you. I’d have done it this morning, but I was drained already, from lack of sleep and all the hiding spells through the night.”
“Where are we going?” Sarah asked. It was interesting to see Cal making bullets, but only because he was doing it with silver. Why did the Elector think he would need silver bullets? Had Cal told the Elector about their faceless claylike attackers? “You said you’d tell us.”
“New Orleans,” Thalanes answered immediately. “I am sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I had the sensation, back at the mountain, that there were eyes upon us. I think we’ve left our pursuers behind, now, at least for the moment.”
“What’s in New Orleans?” she pressed.
“Who is in New Orleans, is the right question,” the monk said. “When I took you, as a newborn baby, to hide you with the Elector and his family, two other trusted servants of your mother took your two siblings—your brother and your sister—and hid them elsewhere.”
“You think one of them is in Louisiana?” Talk of Sarah’s new identity made her jumpy.
“I don’t know where they might be.” Suddenly Thalanes seemed tired. “Wherever they are, they must be in danger, as you’re in danger. I wish to find them, and take all three of you and hide you some place where you’ll be safe from the ruthless ambition of your uncle, at least for a few more years.”
“Well, who’s in New Orleans, then?” Cal plunked out another bullet.
“The man who hid Sarah’s brother was a soldier,” the little priest said, “a good friend to your father, as I was, and present at your father’s death…as was I. He’s not the sort of man who readily disappears for very long, and after he hid your brother, he resurfaced in New Orleans. He’s been there, I believe, these last fifteen years. He can help us find your brother and sister.”
A shiver ran down Sarah’s back, and she leaned back to focus on the night sky. That her mysterious unknown siblings were a brother and a sister made them begin to become real. She felt cheated that she had not been able to know her mother, Mad Hannah. And her father, too—Andrew Calhoun had been as good to her as any father could be, but knowing she was tied to some other man, a man she could never know or even see, made her feel bitter. Her sister and brother lived, though—might be alive—and she longed to know them.
“You described the regalia as ‘things of power,’” she said. “If I had them, maybe I could use that power to protect my brother and sister. Maybe I could take back my father’s throne.”
Thalanes made no comment.
“What are their names?” she asked.
There was a brief silence, interrupted by the plunk! of another silver bullet falling onto the leather.
“Nathaniel Kyres Penn is the name your mother gave your brother,” Thalanes said. “As she gave your sister the name Margaret Elytharias Penn. And, of course, you’re Sarah Elytharias Penn.”
“Calhoun,” Sarah muttered, retreating from a sudden surge of hot emotion. “I like the name Calhoun.”
“Sarah Calhoun sounds jest fine to me, too,” Cal allowed, cutting away more silver sprue. She looked at him, on the verge of tears, and was grateful for the shy, slightly flirtatious eye he cast in her direction. The gratitude came with a pang of guilt—she’d hexed Cal with the same love charm she’d put on Obadiah, and clearly he hadn’t yet recovered.
“I like it, too,” Thalanes agreed, “but not for now. For now neither one of you can be a Calhoun, in case your uncle’s agents are using that name to search for you.”
“We could be called Carpenter,” Cal suggested with a mischievous grin. “Like the Holy Family, fleein’ your uncle King Herod, goin’ down to the fleshpots of New Orleans.”
Sarah laughed out loud and it felt good. “Only I ain’t pregnant, Calvin Calhoun, and iffen I was, no child of mine’d e’er turn out to be the Baby Jesus.”
“I don’t intend no comment on neither the pregnancy nor the virginity of any party,” Cal said. “Likewise, though I do carry an axe, you shouldn’t ought to imagine that I have any great skill at carpenterin’. I remain at best, like my father afore me, a halfway decent cattle rustler.”
They all laughed. Sarah thought for a moment that she might tell Thalanes about the clay creatures, but she didn’t. After all, they were a thing of the past, and the monk had said he thought they’d left their pursuers behind. Besides, a silver bullet should make short work of such creatures.
Instead, she asked a question. “You told me yesterday my father was killed by one of his own dragoons. What can you tell me about that man, the killer?”
Thalanes looked into the fire in silence for long moments. “Bayard Prideux,” he named the traitor softly, and Sarah’s heart felt a sharp pinch. “He was a young soldier. Not a very good one; he was undisciplined and lazy. I never understood why he did it. He killed your father in a terrible storm. We tried to catch him, but failed.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Sarah asked. “Were you there, then?”
“I was there,” Thalanes said. “I was your father’s confessor, and chaplain to the Philadelphia Blues. ‘We’ is the rest of the Dragoons, the men who stayed faithful to your father. All old men now, if not dead.”
“What’s the name of the man we’re going to find, then? The soldier who hid my brother, I mean?”
“Will,” the monk said. “He was Captain of the Dragoons at the time and a minor hero of the Spanish War. He fell from grace. Rather, Thomas threw him from grace, immediately upon his rise to power.”
“Will what?” Sarah insisted, “or is his name a secret, too?”
“William,” Thalanes told her. “Captain Sir William Johnston Lee.”