Ars Magica (30 page)

“God favor her cause,” Gerbert said with a touch of irony. “They're strong-willed, those royal Saxons. Mulish, for a fact.”

There was no delicate way to ask; therefore Richer was blunt. “Has his majesty done something, my lord?”

“No,” said Gerbert. “No. Though he will drive his armies all over Italy when he's barely well enough to sit a horse. Romuald — do you remember him? The holy hermit from Ravenna. He tried to keep my lord there, where he could rest a little, but he wouldn't stay. He's marching on Rome. This time, he says, he'll quash their insurrections for once and for all.” Gerbert's fists clenched and unclenched. “He knows how badly he fares in this climate. He knows what it did to his father, and to his cousin who sat here before me.”

“But not to you.”

“I.” Gerbert shrugged. “I'm peasant stock. As long as no one's trying to rob me of my magic or my office, I'm as tough as old leather. But my lord...”

“You can knock sense into him when you see him. He always listens to you.”

Gerbert's head sank onto his hand. “God grant he does.” He sounded suddenly very tired. But, strangely, not sad; and not ever defeated. “Romuald, the old fox, inveigled a promise out of him. A few years more of empire, and then he takes the habit. But he's as clever in his own way. He'll enter orders, he says, when his empire is firm on its foundations. And when he has begotten an heir to take the crown.”

“He may keep that promise yet. He's sent the Bishop of Milan to find him a bride in Byzantium.”

“So he has, and so he may. And then we'll take pilgrims' vows and set out for Jerusalem.”

“There's a dream worth dreaming,” said Richer.

“Isn't it?” Gerbert's mood had shifted. He was light, almost joyous, as if the very name had given him peace. “Tell me, Jinniyah. Shall I die before I sing mass in Jersualem?”

For a long moment Richer did not think that she would answer. Then, like a bell tolling, it came: the single word. “No.”

She had startled Gerbert. He almost dropped her; Richer snatched, steadying them both. They stared at her. She had gone back to her immobility; her eyes seemed to see no more than bronze should ever see. Almost Richer might have thought that she was angry; but why should she be?

She was female, and Jinniyah. There was no accounting for her moods.

Gerbert patted her cheek. “Ah, old friend. I should take the binding off you.”

“No need.” She sounded faintly sullen. “Let be. It serves its purpose.”

“Still — ” Gerbert began.

He never said the rest of it. He had gone very still. Richer heard it then: swift feet, voices raised in expostulation. The door opened abruptly, letting in a knot of men. Gerbert's chamberlain in great disarray, remonstrating. One or two of the papal guards, hovering and not quite daring to interfere. And at the brunt of them, a man in sodden riding gear, slimed with mud, ignoring his escort to drop to his knees before the pope. “Holy Father,” he said, breathing hard; but his voice was strong, rough with urgency. “My lord emperor begs you, if you will — he would not ask it, but his fever — ”

Gerbert was on his feet. His face was stark white. His voice was frightening, soft as it was, and steady, and emptied of emotion. “Take me to him.”

“But,” said the chamberlain.

“But, my lord,” said Richer.

Gerbert was not there to hear them.

oOo

The emperor's advance had halted at Paterno under Mount Soracte, a good day's march from Rome. His army had settled itself about the town; he had taken the most imposing of its houses, a moldering villa that gazed over winter-deadened gardens to the loom of the mountain. The rain that had turned Rome to mire had fallen here as snow; slopes and summit shone dazzling in the sunrise.

Otto had commanded that his bed be set in a chamber that faced the mountain, and its shutters opened, though the wind was cold. His physicians' expostulations moved him not at all. He lay propped up in the great bed, wrapped in furs; and for a moment as Gerbert crossed the threshold, he knew that he had ridden so hard and so far for nothing more than foolishness.

But the high color in the emperor's cheeks was fever; the light in his eyes was too bright, his voice too lively as he called out, “What,
magister
! So soon? What did your white mule say to such haste?”

“Alba takes her ease in my stable,” said Gerbert. “I imposed myself upon a horse; and an iron-jawed son of Iblis he was, too.”

Otto laughed and beckoned. “Will you forgive me if I don't get up to greet you properly? My knees are my Rome today. They keep turning rebel.”

Gerbert sat on the side of the bed and cursed his brimming eyes. Otto was barely more substantial than a shadow; for all the liveliness of voice and glance, the rest of him barely moved. Beneath the fever-glitter was naught but dark; beneath the semblance of life and strength, sickness that had consumed him.

Gerbert's fault. Gerbert's grievous fault.

Otto could curl his fingers round Gerbert's hand, but he could not lift it. Gerbert raised it himself, so that Otto might kiss his ring. The emperor murmured thanks. When Gerbert tried to withdraw, his fingers tightened. “Stay with me,” he said. “Don't leave me.”

Gerbert swallowed hard and let his hand be held. He was aware, dimly, of people hovering, priests muttering prayers, a woman or a boy trying to sob quietly. They had recognized what power ruled here,
 
as courtiers always did, by unfailing instinct.

As Otto had. For an instant, as he begged Gerbert to stay, the darkness filled his eyes; the old fear, the dread of death. Then he cast it down again and set his foot on it, and clutched at what life was left to him.

It almost broke Gerbert. That Otto did not blame him, not even as a saint might, with grief that all his dreams had come to nothing.

Not quite all of them. Pride, that might be, and Gerbert would pay its price. But he had grown past despair.

Richer had attached himself to Gerbert's riding, asking no leave and needing none. Now Gerbert felt his presence as a banked fire, his magic that was healing magic, his deft hands examining the emperor as much within as without. Otto allowed it with all apparent patience.

Richer drew back and lowered his hands. His eyes met Gerbert's. They were as somber as Gerbert had ever known they could be. “This is beyond my power,” he said.

No
. Gerbert did not know if he said it aloud. It was his whole being, that denial. He had held back this death before, or turned it aside. It could not conquer. It must not.

The monk offered a cupful of something bittersweet. “For the pain,” he said.

Otto did not deny that there was pain: for that, Gerbert almost broke. He drank the dose with hardly a grimace, and smiled at Gerbert. “Look,” he said, turning his face toward the mountain. “Doesn't it put you in mind of your lessons? Pagan Horace saw it just so — maybe from this very place. ‘You see how Soracte stands all white with deep snow, the forests bow beneath their burden, the rivers stand still in the piercing cold.' Isn't it so? And now that you are here, we can live out the rest of it: put the cold to flight with wine and fire, and leave the rest to the gods. ‘Ask not what the morrow shall bring; take what the day's chance shall give...'”

“And shall we take the rest of his advice, too? ‘Spurn not sweet amours, my boy, nor dancing, until sullen age takes away your youth.'”

Otto flushed even through the fever, but he smiled. “Ah, well; he was a pagan. But maybe I can heed him without seeming entirely depraved. I'm betrothed, did you know it? The Bishop of Milan has found me a bride. She's handsome, he tells me, and clever: a very proper princess of Byzantium. They'll be landing at Bari in a day or two. Imagine it,
magister
. An empress for my new Rome. Sons; daughters. A dynasty.” He drew a breath that rattled, still smiling. “You'll marry us, of course. Maybe she'll be like us. Or our children will. More pupils for your school.”

“God willing,” said Gerbert. His magic would not come to his hand. It was coy; it eluded him, sparking where he did not need it, cold and lifeless where he would have spent it all to keep his emperor alive. He was old; he had lived as fully as any man could; he had risen higher than a peasant's child might ever dream of. Why should he not die in Otto's place?

Otto's own magic burned the hotter for his body's failing. It sensed Gerbert's passionate outcry, all silent though it was. “
Magister
.” Otto said it tenderly. His voice was fainter now. “Whether I live or die, God has willed it. I try to look ahead and see the simple light of day, but what I see, what my bones tell me... Romuald knew. He told me when I left him, ‘Go, then. March to Rome. But if you do it, you'll not see Ravenna again.' He's one of us, you know; though he'd tear out my throat if I told him so. He says it's all God in him. And so it is, if not exactly as he sees it.” Otto shifted. Gerbert helped him to settle more comfortably, feeling the fire that burned him. His shirt and his furs were sodden with sweat, and yet he shivered, huddling in them.

The magic, capricious creature that it was, offered a tiny mockery of comfort: it cooled the fire a little, soothing it to gentle warmth. Otto's gratitude washed over Gerbert. Their powers were coming together, slowly but inescapably.

One of the servants ventured to close the shutters upon the mountain and the cold. The darkness was abrupt and, for a moment, absolute. Otto's eyes had closed before the shutters; he did not start up, nor reprimand the servant.

Slowly the darkness lightened to dimness. Someone lit a lamp. Freed from the weight of the outer air, the hypocaust began to warm the room.

Otto had neither fainted nor fallen asleep. After a while he said, “My cousin Henry will be happy. His father fought a long and bitter battle for me and then for my throne; now the son will have all that his father fought for, except my person. He'll be a good enough emperor. But not... He's Saxon. He doesn't understand Rome.”

Otto did not mean the city which Gerbert had ridden out of, which barely understood itself.

A hand touched Gerbert's shoulder, diffident yet persistent. He glanced at Otto's chaplain, whose hands were full: book, stole, candle, the oils of the Last Rites. Anger flared in him, turned his voice to a lash. “Not yet!”

The chaplain retreated, cowed. Gerbert forgot him.

Otto had fallen into a drowse. Sometimes he woke. He talked a little; less as the day waned. Clouds had come back with the sun's sinking. Rain began to fall as it had fallen on Rome, grey and cheerless. It veiled Soracte in fog; it hissed on the tiles of the villa.

“Now,” said Gerbert to the chaplain, roughly, when grey had long since turned to black beyond the shutters. Otto barely stirred, though when Gerbert tried again to withdraw the captive hand, his protest was as sharp as a knife-cut. The chaplain performed the office with fitting reverence: the old, old words, and the anointing of the gates of the senses, and the entrusting of the soul to God. Gerbert murmured the words of the rite, softly, through the pulsing of magic. Otto's power bled out of him, slow yet inexorable.

Gerbert could not stop it. His scarred hand burned; he heard a shadow's laughter.
I give to you as you gave to me.
Blasphemous, those words; mocking; evil.
Mortal faith!

“No,” Gerbert said aloud. The chaplain's Voice faltered. “Don't stop!” Gerbert snapped. The man stumbled, stammered, recovered.

There was nothing to grasp. No power. Only darkness and the broken temple of a body. What Gerbert's oathbreaking had loosed had long since wrought its ill and gone. What remained was only memory. It could not even touch Otto's soul. It had no need. His life was enough; his dream ended before it was begun; all that he could have been and done and wrought. The light would be a little dimmer now, the night a little darker, for that he was not there to know them.

Otto was awake. For a moment in the lamplight he looked almost hale, blinking drowsily, peering at the people who bent over him. But Gerbert was closest, and it was to Gerbert that he spoke. “I'm sorry,
magister
. It was too much for me after all: too much dream, too much empire. God didn't will that I should win it. Someday, maybe...” He trailed off The trickle of power was mounting to a stream. He drew a great, shaking breath. “Did I do well,
magister
? Did I not fail too badly? Did I, maybe, bring a little light into the world?”

The tears brimmed in Gerbert's eyes and overflowed. “A whole great galaxy of it,” he said.

Otto smiled. The flood of magic crested. With one last, desperate leap of power, Gerbert grasped it, clutched it. It twisted in his grip; and suddenly, with a flicker of laughter, poured itself into him.

In vain he reared up his walls. In vain he strove to cast it back. It was as supple as water, as inexorable in its torrent. Just so had he done with his Jinniyah. Just so; but he had been hale and whole. And she was enchanted bronze, but he was flesh; he was not made to bear this weight of magic.