Sunrise Lands c-1 Page 6

  "Remarkable young scamp," Juniper said. "He didn't warn us you were here, the creature."

  Knolles hesitated. "There is one thing more, Nigel. And Lady Juniper. You haven't had much contact with the Atlantic coast of North America, have you?"

  "None at all; we know more about East Asia, or even the Indian Ocean countries," Juniper said. "Scarcely even rumors from east of the Mississippi." She winced slightly. "Just enough to know that it was. .. very bad there. As bad as California, or what Nigel tells of Europe, or mainland Britain."

  Knolles nodded somberly. Nobody who had lived through the Change as an adult would ever be quite free of those memories. It had been worst of all in the hyper-developed zones.

  "On the American mainland, yes, it was very bad. But some islands did much better. Prince Edward Island best of all; rather as the Isle of Wight or Orkney did in relation to Britain. After the, ah, after King William came to the throne, they established close ties with the old coun try-in fact, they've MPs in Parliament at Winchester now, and seats in the Lords."

  "William isn't repeating George the Third's mistakes, eh?" Nigel said, savoring the joke.

  Though it wasn't like Anthony Knolles to waffle around a subject. The other Englishman cleared his throat.

  "Among the places they've landed… or tried to… is Nantucket."

  He shot a glance at them from under shaggy brows to see if the name of the island off southern New England meant anything to them. They both looked back soberly.

  "Then the rumors were true?" Juniper asked softly. "I've talked to those who were listening or watching the news services, right at the time of the Change. To some who were listening while they flew a plane over moun tains, sure! The reports were of something extraordinary going on there on Nantucket, just before…"

  All three nodded. The flash of light that wasn't really light-even the blind had seen it-and the intolerable spike of pain felt by every creature on Earth advanced enough to have a spinal cord. And then the world was Changed; explosives no longer exploded, electricity wouldn't flow in metal wires, combustion engines si lently died, nuclear reactors sat and glowed below their meltdown temperatures until the isotopes decayed and became inert. A civilization built on high-energy tech nologies writhed and died as well. There had been little time then for anything but sheer survival, but in all the years since no slightest hint had been found to account for the why of it.

  Eventually a few scientists had measured the effects with what crude equipment could be cobbled together within the new limits; all they'd found was how eerily the Change was tailored, to make a generator impossible but leave nerves functioning as they always had. .. and that beyond the immediate vicinity of Earth everything seemed to be proceeding as normal. You couldn't even prove that the Change hadn't happened before. Prior to gunpowder, who would have known? Most of human ity put it down to the will of God, or gods, or the devil; a stubborn minority held out for inscrutably powerful aliens from outer space or another dimension.

  "A dome of lights miles high and miles across, and the water boiling around the edge of it, yes," Knolles said in a flat matter-of fact tone. "Multicolored lights, crawling over it like lightning… that's quite definite. We've collected hundreds of testimonies, and found some eyewitness records written down right afterwards, even a photograph or two. I do not believe it is a coin cidence such a thing happened just seconds before the Change."

  "So what did they find there, your Bluenose explorers?" Juniper asked.

  Nigel could feel the pulse beat faster in the hand he held, and his own matching it. This wasn't just a rumor, that was proof… though of what, only the Powers could say.

  Juniper went on: "Not the dome of lights, still there-that we would have heard of. They'd have heard of that in Tibet, sure!"

  Knolles turned to his son. The young officer was in the red coated dress uniform into which he'd changed when he shed his armor, but he'd also brought a small rectan gular box pierced with holes from the diplomatic party's baggage. Nigel had assumed it was a gift of some sort.

  Now he brought it up from the floor, and folded back the covers around it. A soft crooo-cruuuu came from it, and behind wire mesh strutted a bird, cocking its head at the light and looking with interest at a piece of bread nearby.

  Juniper's breath was the first to catch. She'd been a student of the wilds all her life, long before the Change, and had read widely then and since about the life of other lands and times.

  It was an unremarkable bird at first glance; a long-tailed pigeon with a bluish-gray head, the back and wings mottled gray with black patches, paler underparts blush red at the throat and fading to rosy cream. The only thing startling about it was the bright red eyes… .

  Juniper made a small choked sound, putting her hand to her torc as if the twisted gold were throttling her. Her eyes went wide as she turned to Nigel.

  "Do… do you…" she stuttered, something he'd never heard before, her eyes so wide the white showed all around the pale green iris.

  "Yes, my dear," he said quietly, and pushed a crust into the cage.

  Then he began to smile, joy and awe struggling with natural reserve as the bird pecked. "It's a passenger pigeon."

  ****

  "What is it, my dear?" Nigel asked sleepily.

  "I don't know," Juniper Mackenzie said, sitting up in the bed and reaching for her robe. "But-"

  A fist knocked on the door; she turned up the bedside lamp and hurried over. Nigel was on his feet, hand resting inconspicuously on the hilt of the longsword. When she threw open the door a man stood there, white-faced and stuttering.

  Nigel's hand closed on the rawhide and-wire binding of the sword hilt. He knew the signs of raw terror.

  "Lady Juniper! Sir Nigel! There's been a fight at the Sheaf and Sickle, terrible bad. Folk hurt and killed!"

  ****

  Sheaf and Sickle Inn, Sutterdown,

  Willamette Valley, Oregon

  Samhain Eve, CY22/2020 A.D.

  Juniper Mackenzie pushed through the door into the familiar taproom of the Sheaf and Sickle, the armsmen at her heels; Nigel was outside, seeing to the circuit of the town walls lest any killers still at large try to es cape. She let out a quiet breath of relief at the sight of Rudi standing beside a table where a healer worked; the twins and Mathilda and Odard were nearby, and all five were unhurt. The smells of blood and violent death were there, mingling horribly with the familiar homey scent of the place.

  "Well?" she said. "It's a slaughter this is, of my people on my land, and I'd know the meaning of it! It's the Mor rigu and the Wild Huntsman we're dealing with tonight, and no mistake."

  Rudi nodded and gave her an account, succinct and neat as his tutors in the arts of war had taught him; she gasped at his account of Saba's death. His mouth tight ened as anger drove the grue of horror out of him. Up stairs Tom and Moira and their close kin were keening their daughter; the muffled sound of the shrieks rose to a crescendo, then died away into rhythmic moans, laden with unutterable grief, before rising again.

  "I'm a warrior by trade," Rudi said bitterly. "Saba wasn't. She shouldn't have had to fight her last fight alone. First I couldn't save her husband, and then this… May she forgive me, and speak kindly of me to the Guardians."

  "She's with her Raen in the Summerlands, and with all her beloveds," Juniper said quietly, putting an arm around him for a moment.

  "I know, Mother. It doesn't make me feel any better, much less her children."

  "It isn't meant to," Juniper said, a little sternness in her voice. "That's why we keen over the dead; grief is for the living."

  He nodded; they couldn't even do that, not being close enough in blood.

  "I'm glad we came here, though," he said. "It would have been worse if we'd stayed at Raven House. These dirt were already here, waiting to strike; they might have gotten away over the town wall."

  They glanced aside. The healer's lips were pursed in disapproval as she worked at the big dining table; far too many
of the inn's guests were milling about and babbling nearby, despite its still being hours to dawn. A stranger was helping her, a monastic in a black Benedictine robe, with the loose sleeves pinned back up to his shoulders.

  Most of the rest weren't making themselves useful. Some of the outlanders had even had the nerve to try to demand service from the staff. Rudi looked at Juniper, and she nodded slightly; he made a chopping gesture to his friends.

  The twins pushed the crowd back-once by the simple expedient of seizing a man by the elbows and pitching him four feet into the air, to land mostly on his head-and then drew their swords and stood like slender black and silver statues with the points resting on an invisible line across the room, and Odard and Mathilda beside them. Nobody stepped over it; after a moment a few neighbors came to stand around them, glowering at the strangers. Some of the wiser foreigners headed back to their rooms.

  That gave them space and time to go view the bodies of the assassins, laid out on tarpaulins. Juniper had never become entirely inured to the sight of violent death, but she could make herself ignore the wounds and the tumbled diminished look of a corpse when she must.

  "This is a strange thing, and you're right, my darling one; these weren't bandits; they're too well fed and they've the look of trained men."

  "They were," he said grimly. "Well trained, at that."

  "Nor was this any random killing, despite the wealth yonder stranger has in his baggage. Some ruler is behind this-and not one we're familiar with."

  "The Association?" he said reluctantly.

  Mathilda was standing out of earshot, her face still white as a sheet beneath her tan.

  She handled the fight well, from what Rudi says, Juni per thought. But she's not as hard-bitten yet as she'd like to pretend, the which is all to the good. Lord and Lady preserve us from rulers who kill without regret or look on it without being shaken. Of which her mother is a horrible example…

  Rudi sighed in relief when his mother shook her head.

  "Not… not quite their style, and those men"-she nodded towards the bodies-"are strangers to this land."

  "Lady Sandra's ruthless enough," Rudi said quietly.

  "More than ruthless enough, but she has far more sense, and so do Grand Constable Tiphaine and the Count of Odell who's chancellor now. None of them would risk anything while Mathilda is with us. No, this is… I feel something moving here. We've had the rest we were promised, after the war with Arminger. Perhaps it's coming to an end, and the Powers sing a new song, with us as instrument and melody both."

  Her gaze grew wholly human once more, but harder now and shrewd: she was Chief as well as High Priestess, the woman who'd pulled her friends and kin through the time of madness and the death of a world, and built the Clan from refugees and shards.

  "It's best you know. It wasn't just an old friend of Nigel who was calling after you left Raven House and came here, and I don't think it's entirely coincidence. We'll have to learn how the threads knit."

  Chapter Four

  Sutterdown,

  Willamette Valley, Oregon

  November 15, CY22/2020 A.D.

  Father Ignatius, priest, monk and knight-brother of the Order of the Shield of Saint Benedict, stopped and looked around casually as he wiped his quill pen and sharpened it with the little razor built into the writing set that was part of his travel kit. The writing was a combination of letters and numbers that would make no sense to anyone who didn't know the running key-it was based on a medieval Latin version of the Gospel of Mark preserved in the Mount Angel library, and used letters based on their position in the Greek alphabet for numbers under twenty-six-but he didn't want anyone to know it was in code.

  A balance of risks, he thought. If I were to write in my room, everyone would assume it was a secret message, since the light and space are so much better here.

  Nobody paid much attention to him, which he'd counted on. Mount Angel, the town and fortress monastery that held the Mother House of his Order, was only fifty miles north of here, and the Clan and the Benedictines had been allies since the early days after the Change. They'd fought the greatest battle of the War of the Eye together, not far from his parents' little farm. He didn't remember that well-he'd been ten-but re lations had stayed friendly, and a traveling cleric wasn't rare enough to be noteworthy in Sutterdown.

  And he was nothing remarkable to look at himself, a dark man of middling height, slender save for the broad shoulders and thick wrists of a swordsman.

  There weren't many people in the Sheaf and Sickle's common room today in any case; this was the slow season for inns, as well as being a house of grief. He'd of fered to move out, but the Brannigans insisted that he stay as long as he wished-and he suspected that they welcomed the prospect of work, as a distraction.

  A round dozen guests didn't begin to crowd it, even when half of them were playing darts and the rest sit ting, and occasionally singing, over their mugs of cider. A low fire crackled in the big stone hearth, giving off a pleasant smell of fir wood. One of the younger Bran nigan daughters came out with a tray bearing his lunch; she looked a little haggard, but the smile was genuine as she set the bowl of stew and platter of cut bread, butter, cheese and radishes down before him.

  "Thank you, my child; that smells delicious."

  "Sure, and you're welcome, Father," she replied. "Call out if there's anything more you're wanting. We're serv ing roast beef tonight, and there's dried-cherry pie for after."

  If she noticed him moving his arm so that the broad sleeve of his robe covered most of the writing, she didn't give any indication of it.

  I like Mackenzies, he thought, not for the first time.

  They were a mannerly folk, if less stiff and solemn about it than some would prefer, and for all their free and easy ways they didn't have the magpie inquisitive ness you'd find in one of the Association's towns, or the single minded pursuit of either Mammon or some academic fad that grated on the nerves in Corvallis. Granted their absurd religion was silly at best and conducive to sin at worst

  …

  If only they could be brought to the Truth, what an or nament to the Faith they would be. O Lord, may it be soon! Do not keep Your light from these good folk! Mary pierced with sorrows, intercede for them.

  Still, evangelization was not his task, particularly not now; and Mackenzies were a difficult target anyway.

  Their cheerful eclecticism made ordinary argument about as effective as trying to wrestle with a sheepskin blanket. He signed himself with the cross and murmured a grace over the meal, then began to eat. The stew was mutton with barley and carrots and onions, tangy with herbs-what "savory" really meant, rather than the "dark and salty" which often had to substitute for it. It went down well on a cold winter day, with rain that was half slush beating against the roof and windows.

  As he ate he read: The assailants were definitely Cor winites and, to a high probability, of the personal troops of the false Prophet, who are often used for special op erations. Why the CUT was willing to risk provoking the hostility of the Mackenzies to kill Ingolf Vogeler I have been unable to determine; nor, I believe, do the Mackenzie leaders themselves know. Vogeler has been on the verge of death for many days but is now expected to recover.

  Mackenzie physicians were excellent, and those at Dun Juniper best of all. They added magic and pagan prayers to the drugs and instruments, but that apparently did no harm.

  I will attempt to gather further information when he does. My preliminary hypothesis is that he carries information that Corwin is desperately anxious the Western powers should not obtain.

  He looked down, wondering if that was a little ob vious. The Mother House of his order at Mount Angel had been worried about the Church Universal and Tri umphant for some time; they had missions and chap ter houses throughout what had once been the Pacific Northwest apart from New Deseret, and of course the Catholic Church as a whole was also concerned. Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski had hoped that as the Prophet sank further into madness the men
ace would subside, but in stead it had grown as his adopted son Sethaz took over more and more of the reins.

  The cardinal archbishop of Portland had been con cerned enough to forward their reports to the New Vati can in Badia. Not that the Holy See could do much more than offer advice and comfort and prayer; it was many months' sailing away, across stormy, pirate ridden oceans and lands often hostile when they weren't empty.

  Still, prayer is more powerful than armies, in the end, he thought . The sword is useless without the heart and will.

  His eyes traveled on through the neat letter combinations:

  With respect to my original mission, the Princess Mathilda is still at Dun Juniper, with her retinue. She and they take the Sacraments regularly from her chaplain confessor. No apparent change has taken place in her relationship to the Mackenzie tanist. I will He finished the report and the stew at about the same time, mopped the bowl with a heel of the bread, then folded the pages into the envelope, sealed it, and heated a wafer over the tabletop lantern. That he pressed across the flap-with a cunning hair plucked from his tonsured head concealed beneath it in a certain pattern-and stamped his signet ring into the soft crimson wax. There were ways to lift a wax seal and replace it, but the hair trick hadn't been discovered by anyone yet.

  Or at least not that the Order knows of, he thought dryly. Paranoia was an occupational hazard of intel ligence work. Many are the marvels of God's Creation, but none so marvelous as man. Or so cunning, for good and ill.

  "Would you be wanting me to send that down to the station, Father?" the Brannigan girl asked, as she came back to collect the dishes.

  He smiled at the musical lilt. The Benedictines still encouraged scholarship, even if their main concerns were more immediately practical these days. One of his courses in the seminary had been on the post-Change evolution of variant forms of English, and the Mac kenzies' speech was a fascinating case of the semide liberate formation of a new dialect. The process was continuing in the second generation, and even picking up speed.