CHAPTER 20:
FEARFUL SYMMETRY
Feronantus woke to find snow on the ground, a layer of fluffy whiteness as if the clouds had settled down to rest and were determined to sleep well past dawn. He wrapped a heavy fur around his shoulders as he got to his feet and staggered away from the camp to piss. His back ached, his knees were complaining, and the only relief he felt was the satisfaction of emptying his bladder.
The veil of night was slipping away; in the east, the horizon was more purple than black and a few of the bright stars winked at him, wanting to get his attention for a while longer before the sun leaped into the sky and scared all the stars away. The flaming dragon that drove away the night birds with the glittering eyes.
There was no snow on the Spirit Banner, or on the ground in a rough circle around it. He was no longer mystified by the unnatural way in which the banner ignored the weather of the steppe. Was it sacrilege to be bored by the ineffable? Was he a heretic for not worshiping the stick? True crusaders were sustained by their faith, their unshakeable belief in something far greater than themselves, and history was littered with the corpses of men who stood fast against unbelievers and doubters. How could he be one of those men if he did not burn with the same zeal? He was nothing more than an addled old man, fleeing across a land devastated by men who believed in the power of this stick.
He raised his hand and ran his fingers through one of the horsehair strands, the hair rough against his calloused and chapped hands. For the first few weeks after he had taken it, whenever he touched the horsehair in the morning he would imagine hearing an immense herd of horses, galloping endlessly across the steppe. Over time, the echo of the foam-flecked horses had faded until he heard nothing when he touched the banner, nothing but the slow rhythm of his heart.
Every night since he had imagined the tiger looming over Istvan, inhaling the Hungarian’s lazy breath, his dreams had been turbulent. He was not one of those who frantically tried to capture the essence (or even the particular details) of a given dream when he woke, but he was plagued by the persistent sense that he was forgetting something.
This was one of the more nagging aspects of the Vor—the awareness of knowing without knowing how or why such knowledge was gleaned. It had always been this way, even before he had known of his gift. Peregrinus had seen it in him, and the harsh lesson learned while he had been shitting was not one he had ever forgotten.
Feronantus let his thumb rest against the gnarled bump on the banner. The spot was healed over now, as if it had always been a knot of scarred wood, and not—as it had been when he had first acquired the banner—a fresh cut that was only beginning to scab.
Some wounds heal, he thought. Others did not. He looked at the scars on the back of his hand, the old cuts and nicks that had faded to tiny white lines on his flesh, as if he were a map so faded nothing could be read but the vague impression of ancient mountain ranges. Would that be the fate of the world? he wondered. After he and every Shield-Brethren were long dead. Would the world be wiped clean by snow or ice? Or fire, even? An endless plume of smoke and ash, belching from some volcano that finally erupted for a generation or more?
The Shield-Brethren would be gone. He knew that much. He had seen it come to pass, and he knew he had a part yet to play in that untimely disappearance. Just as he knew it would require a hard sacrifice, which is why he had left the others at Burqan-qaldun.
What father wouldn’t sacrifice himself for his children?
By mid-morning, clouds obscured the sky, a voluminous layer of white that sank closer and closer to the ground. The wind danced around the pair of horsemen for an hour before deciding that it would blow steadily from the north against their faces. Feronantus wrapped strips of cloth about his head in a vain attempt to keep ice from building in his beard, and Istvan huddled in his saddle, cloak pulled tightly about his lean frame. Seeing they were going to be undeterred in their route, the wind looped up in the clouds and returned with stinging rain and pellets of snow that flew at them like a swarm of icy bugs.
There was little respite from the storm, and even if they had wanted to wait it out, there was no shelter on the steppe. Istvan threw a length of rope to Feronantus and both men looped their respective ends loosely about their saddle horns in an effort to not lose one another in the blizzard. His horse continued to plod onward, its mane coated with snow and ice, its head hanging dejectedly.
They had been through worse, Feronantus reminded himself. The last blizzard they had suffered through had been in the mountains, where the terrain had been much more treacherous. The path had been narrow, and if they had strayed too far, they would have stumbled off the edge of a cliff. On the steppe, there was little danger of falling into a crevasse or being crushed by an avalanche of snow. They had to keep moving until they found shelter or the clouds ran out of snow to pelt them with.
The rope jerked taut between the horses, and Feronantus dimly stared at it for a while before nudging his horse to close the gap. Istvan’s horse hadn’t fallen; it had merely drifted from the course they had been taking. Their pace was so slow that it mattered little if they wandered more west than north. They were in the middle of the empty steppe.
Feronantus’s horse stumbled, and he clutched at the horn of his saddle. The horse continued on as if nothing had happened, but Feronantus felt the change. The horse was picking its way down an incline. It wasn’t a steep slope, but they had definitely crossed a ridge line.
The fury of the storm lessened, and his horse picked up its pace. He wrapped his shaking hands around the rope and pulled up the slack. The snow slowed to a swirling cloud of fat flakes as he and his horse descended beneath the level of the steppe.
The snow wasn’t sticking on the ground, and as he pulled the ice-encrusted cloth away from his cheeks and eyes, he spotted dark streaks in the dirt. No plants grew either. The ground was bare, marred by the black stains.
The rope slackened even more, and he brought his horse to a halt beside Istvan’s motionless steed. The Hungarian was shivering uncontrollably, his teeth clacking in his mouth; unable to form words, he pointed instead. Several paces ahead of them the ground became soft, dissolving into a pool of slow-bubbling darkness.
“What is it?” he croaked, but his voice was nothing more than a dry whisper and Istvan did not appear to have heard him. Shaking off the layer of rime that had formed on his cloak, Feronantus descended from his horse and stiffly edged closer to the pool.
The ground around the pool was stained black, and a pace or two in front of the horses, Feronantus crouched and slowly tugged one of his leather gloves off. The ground was cold but not frozen, and when he raised his fingers, they were slick with the oily darkness. He sniffed at his fingers, and rubbed them together, feeling the sticky texture of the muck. The smell reminded him of old keeps, stone towers built in an age when windows were a luxury and the stone walls and ceilings were dark with soot from torches and candles. It reminded him of something else as well, a memory of castle walls and an unrelenting sun, beating down on an empty desert.
He stood quickly and backed away from the pool. “Greek fire,” he swore, memories of the long siege of Acre coming back to him. It had been his first campaign after taking the Shield-Brethren vows. They had arrived in the Holy Land in the spring, and had joined the crusading army that sought to take Acre from Saladin. The crusaders had been camped outside the city for months, and disease was rampant in the camp. It wasn’t until Richard Lionheart had arrived several months later that the crusaders were able to rally themselves. Richard had had siege engines built, and after pummeling the walls for a week, he had given the order to attack. He remembered the smell of the sticky fire poured from the walls by the Muslims. It fell like black rain, and the Christian attackers did not understand the danger until Muslim archers sent a volley of flaming arrows down. In an instant, the entire rank was transformed into a wall of roaring flame, the men screaming as the greasy liquid ignited and melted their flesh.
Istvan slid off his horse and staggered to Feronantus’s side. The Hungarian’s beard was coated with ice and his eyes were bright with a fevered light. “World fire,” he murmured.
“No,” Feronantus said, grabbing Istvan’s arm.
The Hungarian turned his icy face toward Feronantus. “Is that not what you see?” he asked. “Is that not what you learn during the night when you hang yourself on the wood?” He raised a shaking arm and pointed at the Spirit Banner slung across Feronantus’s saddle. “Is that not what she wants?” Fresh ice glistened on his cheeks.
“She?” Feronantus did not understand what Istvan was talking about. The Hungarian had been coherent when they had broken camp but, as when Istvan had stumbled into Feronantus’s camp during the mountain crossing, the cold weather could trigger a resurgence of the mind fever as if it were a shield against the winter chill.
“You saved me once,” Istvan said. “That debt must be paid.” He drew his sword and Feronantus stepped back, unsure of Istvan’s intentions, but the Hungarian made no move toward him. Instead, Istvan knelt at the edge of the pool and thrust his sword blade into the sticky darkness. When he drew it free, the steel was black.
“Go,” Istvan said. “I will give her what she wants.”
“I don’t understand what you are telling me,” Feronantus said. “I don’t know who you are talking about.”
Istvan fumbled one-handed in the pouch on his belt and produced his flint stone. “Go,” he shouted at Feronantus as he slammed the flint against his blade. A shower of sparks leaped from the contact, and the horses whinnied in fear.
But they weren’t reacting to the sparks.
Feronantus heard a low rumbling growl, and he slowly turned his head and looked to his right.
The tiger was less than ten paces away.
“Here,” Istvan shouted, banging his flint against his sword again. “I am the one you seek.” Sparks flew again, and the tiger snarled in response, revealing long white teeth.
Light bloomed behind Feronantus, and he heard a whoosh of sound as Istvan’s blade was engulfed with flame. The Hungarian raised his weapon and charged the tiger.