Speak to the Devil

CHAPTER 35

Madlenka was seated at her dressing board, taking pins out of her hair. The room was dim, with only a single lamp to scare away the shadows. She felt wrung dry by the events of the day, shattered by Wulf’s expected return, and nauseated at the thought of another interminable night with Anton. He wasn’t an evil man. If he saved the castle from the Wends, he might eventually make a good count and lord of the marches. At the moment, he was just an arrogant and insensitive youth. Perhaps few men of that age were much better, and Wulfgang was an extreme exception. She suspected that she might now be quite content with her lot if she had never met her husband’s brother.

There were two reflections in the glass.

She spun around. “Wulf! Idiot! Go away. I rang for my maid.”

“She’ll knock.” He was standing well away from her, his face grave.

“Anton-”

“Is on his way. We have a moment, that’s all. Oh, Madlenka! I just came to tell you that it was my fault and I am-”

She jumped up. “No, it was mine!”

“I told you I would be forty days and-”

“And I betrayed you in forty minutes.”

He shook his head and came a step closer. “I should have told Anton about us when I cured his wound.”

“Told him you wanted me as your share of the spoils?”

He smiled wanly. “Would you have minded if I’d called you that?”

“No. I would happily be your loot. Pillage me now and take me far, far away. I will never complain.”

He shook his head. “There’s no escape. That would make you a fugitive, a felon, an adulteress, and God knows what else. Even an accomplice to Satanism. We would be outside the law and condemned by the Church. Our children would be bastards, nobodies.”

She knew all that. She thought about it in bed a lot. “I don’t want you to reproach yourself. It was my fault for being so weak.”

“Mine!” he insisted.

“Your only mistake was healing Mother. If she’d not been there I could have stood up to them. But she threatened to lock me up in the Poor Claires’ convent until the king could decide what to do with me. Anton would never have done that. But she would! And the bishop…”

They had been moving closer. Now they were close enough to touch, but neither made the move. In the gloom his eyes were not golden, they were silver, like moonlight reflected in water.

“Forget all that,” he said. “It’s done, and you could never have found happiness with me. I am a Satanist. I’ve killed a priest and helped kill another. The Church will hunt me down and order me burned at the stake. I will love you forever, but you must forget me and love Anton. And pray that none of his children are Speakers, because Speaking is the curse of our line.”

Knuckles tapped softly on the door.

“My love,” he said, “always.” Then he vanished.

“If you keep doing things like that, I think I’ll burn you at the stake myself,” Vlad said.

Wulf resumed his place on the hob and filled his goblet. No one had moved in his absence: Marek was seated in the center facing him, Vlad to his right, Otto to his left.

Getting no answer, Vlad said, “Even if Anton dies, of the plague or anything else, a man cannot marry his brother’s widow.”

Wulf drank and picked up the flagon for a refill.

Vlad tried again. “Well at least you were quick. Did she enjoy it, too?”

Wulf stared at him coldly. “One more joke like that,” he said softly, “and I will burn your balls off, so help me God.” He put the goblet to his lips and drained it.

Silence.

“You are a dangerous combination, Brother,” Otto said. “The family chronicle begins almost two hundred years ago, in the time of the fourth baron. It names six Speaker daughters and hints at another, but only two Speaker sons before Marek. Meaning no disrespect to him, he has always been more of a scholar than a warrior. He would rather settle a dispute with law and reason than with sword or fist.” He glanced at Marek, who smiled to show he was not offended. “But you, Brother Wolfgang, wield your powers audaciously. You have a hair-trigger temper and you fear nothing, true to the Magnus motto.”

Wulf did not reply. He wished he had not threatened Vlad, but he would not withdraw his words.

“You are probably the most dangerous man in Jorgary,” Otto persisted.

“What I think,” Marek announced solemnly, “is that I’m going to get catastrophically drunk for the first time in my life.” He took a long draft, straight from a flagon. “Foul stuff! I’ll say this for Koupel-it does have grand wine… Brothers, one thing still puzzles me. Tonight, when I asked my Voices to restore the old countess, St. Uriel told me that it was important for me to know why she had been affected. I have asked him since to explain, but he will not. My saints have never volunteered advice before. Any helpful suggestions?”

He was looking at Wulf, who made an effort to think about it. “Vilhelmas had cursed her before, so perhaps she was more susceptible and he could do it from farther away.”

“Puppies make her sick?” Vlad suggested.

“I suppose… Mother of God!” Marek fell back in his chair, gaping up at the chimney above Wulf’s head. The room filled with a swirl of wood smoke and the sounds of voices and a crackling fire.

Otto and Vlad both spoke at once, demanding to know what was wrong.

“You killed my friend!” cried a shrill voice.

Marek made croaking noises. His brothers stared at one another in bewilderment. Just as Wulf realized that there must be an open gate in front of Marek that was only visible from that side, Leonas Vranov stepped from nowhere into the space between them. He was clutching a puppy. His always-pale face was white with fury, his fair hair stuck up in spikes, and he was slobbering.

Vlad roared an oath and started out of his chair. He drew his sword.

Otto shouted, “Wait! Careful!”

Leonas shook his free fist in Marek’s face. “You killed my friend and I HATE you!”

“That’ll do, Leonas,” his father’s voice said.

“I want you to die too!”

Wulf leaped past him and turned to view the gap, the same timber barracks, faces watching, Havel Vranov with a sword in his hand…

“Come back here, Leonas!”

The youth spat, turned around, and disappeared back into nowhere. The gate through limbo vanished.

Otto muttered a prayer and made the sign of the cross. “Gone! So now we know how it was done. But who opened the gate for him, if you killed Vilhelmas? The Wends have more Speakers?”

“Or Leonas himself is one!” Wulf said. “He was close to Countess Edita tonight. Could that be why your Voice told you… Marek? Marek! ”

Marek was leaning back in his chair, eyes glazed over. Otto and Wulf lunged across simultaneously and knelt on either side of him.

“No! Marek!” Wulf grabbed his brother’s hand. “St. Victorinus! Holy St. Helena! No! No! No!”

He could find no fire, only ash. Like Azuolas, Marek had gone.

“No pulse. He’s dead.” Otto reached out and closed their brother’s eyes.

The three stared at one another in dismay, struggling to believe it.

One by one they bent their heads in prayer.

Marek, oh, Marek! You never wanted to hurt anyone until tonight. Five years locked up in Koupel, two days’ liberty, and now this! Why didn’t you let me kill Vilhelmas?

Eventually Wulf spoke. “He warned me. He told me when Anton and I went to the monastery, ‘Anything the Voices do for you will turn to evil eventually!’”

Otto and Vlad just nodded.

Leonas! Who could have imagined that an imbecile could be a Speaker? They should have noticed that the knights didn’t stop him when he went to Madlenka in the hall. Why hadn’t they? Probably because they suddenly didn’t want to. Leonas had not deliberately done anything to them or to the countess. Like a small child, he just wanted things and expected them to happen. And in his case, they did. He had no nimbus, because that came with understanding, and he would never understand.

Otto had his hands clasped as if he were still praying. “No wonder his father keeps close watch on him. He threw a tantrum at Count Stepan and his son and they died-when? A few days later, a couple of weeks later? Is that possible?”

“You know as much as I do,” Wulf said. He felt as if he were standing inside a block of ice. Marek! Oh, Marek! “Seems anything’s possible.”

Vilhelmas had certainly been a Speaker with a nimbus, but he might not have killed Stepan and Petr Bukovany. He was a distant cousin, so Satanism ran in the Vranov family also.

Wulf put it in words. “Maybe Leonas’s curses took time to act. Or one day his father said, ‘Remember those two bad men who shouted at you at Cardice? You don’t like them, do you?’ Madlenka was kind to him, so she wasn’t affected. Leonas doesn’t like the old countess and he was close to her tonight. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing-but his father knows! Vranov uses him as a weapon, a puppet Speaker.”

Otto shook his head in despair. “You mean that just now Vranov said, ‘Do you remember that funny little man with the shaved head who ran around in the banquet hall, shouting at us? He was the one who killed Father Vilhelmas. Go and tell him how much you hate him’?”

Wulf nodded, tasting vomit. “The boy can’t be trusted in churches because the voices echo and sound like his Voices. He probably doesn’t understand what his Voices are saying.”

“He scares the piss out of me,” Vlad said. “We’d better tell Anton.”

“Tomorrow,” Otto said. “Right now we need a priest.”

“What do you want me to do about this, Brothers?” Wulf demanded. “A Magnus lies dead. Do I avenge him? Go and kill that half-wit boy?”

“No!” Vlad bellowed. “No, not now. It’s a trap. They’ll be waiting for you.”

“Not ever, I think,” Otto said.

“Why not? I’m damned already. Obviously my Voices came from Satan. I’ve killed two priests and now my brother has died because of what I did.”

Vlad and Otto exchange shocked looks.

“No!” Vlad boomed. “Never, never think that way! Your intentions were good.”

Otto said, “But now you understand the dangers your Voices warned you against. To civic rulers like Anton you are a killer who can strike anyone, at any time. To the Church you’re Heresy Incarnate. You’re the Antichrist. You could start a great heretical movement like Jan Huss did, or overthrow the pope. Duke Wartislaw may not know about you yet, but you’ll certainly be his prime target as soon as he does. Even Cardinal Zdenek must disown you now. You could supplant him, or depose King Konrad and take the crown. You’re more dangerous than the Ottoman Sultan or the Great Pestilence. Can anybody or anything control you now, boy?”

“Another Speaker,” Wulf said. “Azuolas would have beaten me tonight if Marek hadn’t come to my aid. A gang of them certainly could.”

“You must leave Castle Gallant,” Otto persisted. “Tonight! Go far away and make a new life under a new name.”

Wulf shook his head and reached for wine. “No.”

“Remember what I told you about Joan of Arc being burned? Remember Julius Caesar, stabbed? Alexander the Great, poisoned? You’re a danger to everybody, Wulf! All power is unpopular but absolute power will turn every man’s hand against you.”

“You must go, Wolfcub.” Vlad looked genuinely concerned.

Wulf desperately wanted to do that, to be far away from Madlenka and the torment of seeing her as Anton’s wife. Now that he knew that the Wends had at least one Speaker guarding their great bombard, the chances that he could save Castle Gallant had dropped from slim to very close to zero. But there was no place to hide from Speakers. Brother Lodnicka knew his face now, so he could come to Wulf anywhere, at any time. He might be watching through his eyes right now, listening with his ears.

“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “I don’t have to stay here and die. It’s Anton’s pissy castle. Let him defend it! So where shall we go?”

“We?” his brothers barked in perfect unison.

That seemed so funny that Wulf almost laughed, until he remembered that Marek’s corpse lay sprawled in the chair beside him. Oh, Marek, Marek! How were they going to explain this death to a priest?

“Everything you said about me applies to both of you. Cardice is none of our business. So where shall I take us?”

“Magnuses do not run away!” Vlad roared.

“No, we don’t,” Wulf said. Of course, when the castle was about to fall, he would rescue Madlenka and move her to somewhere safe. But then he would come back and stand with his brothers. It was the Magnus way. He raised his glass. The other two saw what was coming and raised theirs.

They proclaimed the toast together: “Omnia audere!”

Before the wine touched their lips, a fist banged on the door. Vlad hurtled across the room to open it, using his bulk to block the newcomer’s view of Marek. He also hid Wulf’s view of the newcomer, but Wulf recognized the voice of Dalibor Notivova.

“Campfires, Sir Vladislav! Down at High Meadows. The lookouts spotted a couple just after dark and now there’s at least a score of them. Seems an army’s moving in, pitching camp!”

“High Meadows?” Vlad said. “You mean south of us? Not the Wends, then?”

“No, sir. Pelrelmians, maybe. Can’t be king’s men, or they’d come to the gate.”

“Vranov!”

“Seems likely, sir. But a lot more men than he had there last weekend.”

Vlad boomed out a laugh. “Well, Dali my lad, that’s good news! Excellent news! I am exactly in the mood to head out and kill somebody! Let’s find me a warm cloak and you and I will go have a look.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You two clean up here.” He chivvied Dali out ahead of him and closed the door.