Destiny (17 page)

She grabbed one of the digital cameras she used for close-up work. She took several shots of the images.

When she was satisfied that she had all that she needed, she stared at the imperfections on the blade. She ran her fingers over them again, feeling how deeply they bit into the metal.

The sight of them, the feel of them, was almost unbearable.

She willed the sword away, back into wherever it went when it was not with her. It faded from her hands like early-morning fog cut by direct sunlight.

Taking a deep breath, she reached into that otherwhere and drew the sword back. Light gleamed along the blade. The marks had disappeared.

A quick check of the images on the digital camera revealed that the shots she'd taken still existed. She put the sword on the bed and turned her full attention to the camera images.

Was the sword weak while it was shattered?
Annja wondered.
Or had it allowed itself to be marked? And if it had allowed itself to be marked, why?

She set to work.

Using the software on her computer, Annja blew up the images of the wolf and the mountain. After they were magnified, she saw there were other images, as well. The detail of the work was amazing.

The shadowy figure behind the bars was better revealed. Although manlike in appearance, the figure was a grotesquerie, ill shaped and huge, judging from the figure of the man standing behind him.

With her naked eye, Annja had barely been able to make out the second figure. Once the image was blown up, she couldn't miss him. He wore the armor of a French knight. A shield bearing his heraldry stood next to him.

Annja blew up the image more, concentrating on the shield.

The shield was divided in the English tradition rather than the French. That surprised Annja. The common armchair historian assumed that all heraldry was the same, based on the divisions of the shield that English heraldry was noted for. But the French, Italians, Swedish and Spanish—as well as a few others—marked their heraldry differently.

This one was marked
party per bend sinister
—diagonally from upper right to lower left. The upper half showed the image of a wolf with its tongue sticking out. The animal didn't have much detail, but Annja got a definite sense of malevolence from the creature. The lower half of the shield was done in ermines, a variation of the field that represented fur. Ermines were traditionally black on white.

The design was unique. If it hadn't disappeared in history, there would likely be some documentation on it.

Annja cut the shield out of the image with the software, cleaned up the lines as much as she could and saved it.

Logging onto alt.archaeology, she sent a brief request for identification to the members. She also sent an e-mail to a professor she knew at Cambridge who specialized in British heraldry. She also followed up with a posting to alt.archaeology.esoterica.

What was a British knight doing at a French monastery of an order of monks that had been destroyed?

Annja returned to the image.

The shadowy, misshapen figure had another drawing under it. Annja almost missed the discovery. The image had been cut into the metal but it was almost as if it had been scored there only to have the craftsman change his mind later.

Or maybe he was told not to include it, Annja thought.

She magnified the image and worked on it, bringing it into sharper relief with a drawing tool. In seconds, she knew what she was looking at. A lozenge.

Annja sat back in her chair and stared at the image, blown away by the possibilities facing her. The shadowy figure wasn't a man. It was a woman.

The lozenge was heraldry to represent female members of a noble family. Designed in an offset diamond shape that was taller than it was wide, a lozenge identified the woman by the family, as well as personal achievements.

This particular lozenge only had two images on it. A wolf salient, in midleap, occupied the top of the diamond shape. At the bottom was a stag dexter, shown simply standing. A crescent moon hung in the background with a star above and a star below.

Annja repeated her efforts with the postings, sending off the new image, as well.

Back aching from the constant effort, Annja decided to take a break. She quickly dressed and went out into the rainy night, surprised to find that dawn was already apparent the eastern sky.

 

A
NNJA HEADED
for the small Italian grocery store several blocks from her loft. The Puerto Rican bodega she favored was closer, but it wasn't open at such an early hour. She didn't mind as she wanted to stretch her legs.

She loved being in the middle of the city as it woke around her. Voices cracked sharply. Cars passed by in the street, horns already honking impatiently.

Stopping by the newsstand, she picked up a handful of magazines—
Time, Newsweek, Scientific American, People, Entertainment, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine,
and
Magazine of Fantasy
and
Science Fiction.

She liked to keep up with current events. The entertainment and fiction magazines were guilty pleasures. If she hadn't been able to occasionally borrow from fictional lives in the orphanage, she sometimes wondered if she'd have made it out with the curiosity about the world and the past that she now had.

At the grocery store, she passed a pleasant few minutes with the owner, who loved to talk about her children, and bought a small melon, eggs, fresh basil, a small block of Parmesan cheese and garlic bread. She also picked up a gallon of orange juice.

Back at the loft, Annja let herself in through all five locks. She was startled but not entirely surprised to find Garin seated at her desk. Her eyes immediately strayed to the bed, but the sword was nowhere to be seen.

“You're looking for the sword?” Garin seemed amused. He wore a black turtleneck, jeans and heavy black boots. A leather jacket hung on the back of the chair.

“How did you get in?” Annja demanded. She stood in the open door, ready to flee immediately.

“I let myself in,” he said. “I did knock first.”

Suspicion formed in Annja's mind. She had the definite sense that he'd waited for her to leave, then broke in.

“You weren't here,” Garin said.

“Odd that I happened to miss you,” Annja said.

Garin smiled. “Serendipity. You can never properly factor that into anything.”

“You could have waited for me to get back,” Annja pointed out.

“And stood out in the hallway so that your neighbors would gossip about you?” Garin shook his head. “I couldn't do that.”

Deciding that she didn't have anything to fear from the man—at least for the moment—Annja walked into the kitchen area and placed the groceries on the counter.

“Breakfast?” Garin asked.

“Yes.” Annja took a big skillet from the wall.

“We could order in. I noticed there are some places nearby that deliver,” Garin said.

“I've eaten restaurant food for days,” Annja replied. “Here and in France. I want to cook.” She put the skillet on the burner to warm, then cracked eggs into a bowl.

Glancing over her shoulder, Annja saw that he looked amused. She resented his presence in her home, the fact that he had broken in, and she was distrustful of him. Still, she couldn't just pretend he wasn't there when she was about to eat.

“Have you eaten?” she asked.

“No. I just got in from LaGuardia.” Garin sat at the desk. “But that's all right. You go ahead.”

“Nonsense. There's enough for both of us. More than enough.”

“That's very kind of you. Can I help?”

Annja chopped the basil and Garin grated the Parmesan. She mixed both with the eggs, then poured olive oil into the skillet. “Have you really lived over five hundred years?” she asked, suddenly aware of feeling comfortably domestic with this mysterious stranger.

Garin smiled. “You find that hard to believe?”

Annja didn't answer. She sliced the garlic bread and the melon.

“You know what happened to the sword, don't you?” Garin asked. “You've got it.”

Annja poured the eggs into the skillet, then popped the bread into the toaster.

“Where is the sword?” Garin asked.

“It disappeared,” Annja replied. “Somewhere outside Paris.”

Grinning, he said, “I don't believe you.”

“We share a trait for skepticism.” Annja scrambled the eggs. “Would you care for some orange juice?”

Garin walked around the loft, gazing at all the things Annja had collected during her years as an archaeologist. “You have a nice home,” he said softly.

Annja had deliberately left the bread knife close at hand. So far, Garin didn't appear to be armed. “Thank you,” she said, watching him closely.

“I know you're lying about the sword,” Garin said, looking at her.

The bread slices popped out of the toaster. She laid them on plates, buttered them. “That's not a polite thing to say to someone about to serve you breakfast.”

“The sword was on the bed when I arrived,” Garin told her.

For a moment, Annja felt panic race through her. She concentrated on the eggs, removing the skillet from the heat.
If he'd taken the sword, he wouldn't be here now.

“It disappeared when I tried to touch it,” Garin said.

“Maybe it was just a figment of your imagination,” Annja said, flooded with relief.

Garin shook his head. “No. I've seen that sword before. And I've lived with its curse.”

“What curse?” Annja asked.

Approaching her but staying out of arm's reach, Garin leaned a hip against the kitchen counter. “A story for a story,” he told her. “It's the only fair way to do this.”

Annja dished the scrambled eggs onto the garlic toast. She added slices of melon.

“Very pretty,” Garin said.

“I prefer to think of it as nourishing.” Annja handed him his plate.

Garin looked around. “I don't see a dining table.”

“That's because I don't have one.” Scooping up her own plate and orange juice, Annja walked to the window seat. She thought about the Mercedes Garin had driven in Lozère. “Probably isn't exactly the lifestyle you're used to,” she said, feeling a little self-conscious.

“Not the lifestyle I now have,” he agreed. “But this is a lot better than I started out with.”

Annja folded herself onto one end of the window seat. “Where did you grow up?”

“One of the city-states in Germany. A backwoods place. Its name is long forgotten now.” Garin sat and ate his food. “I was the illegitimate son of a famous knight.”

“How famous?”

Garin shook his head. “He's been forgotten now. But back then, he was a name. Famous in battle and in tournaments. I was the only mistake he'd ever made.”

For a moment, Annja felt sorry for Garin. Parents and relatives who simply hadn't wanted to deal with kids had dumped them at the orphanage. It was an old story. Evidently it hadn't changed in hundreds of years.

If Garin could be believed.

“I like to think that my father cared for me in some way,” Garin went on. “After all, he didn't give me to a peasant family as he could have. Or let my mother kill me, as she'd tried on a couple of occasions.”

Annja kept eating. There were horrible stories throughout all histories. She wasn't inured to them, but she had learned to accept that there were some things she couldn't do anything about.

“Instead,” Garin went on, “my father gave me to a wizard.”

“Roux?” That news startled Annja.

“Yes. At least that's what men like him were called in the old days. Once upon a time, Roux's name was enough to strike terror in the hearts of men. When he cursed someone, that person's life was never the same again.”

“But that could simply be the perception of the person cursed,” Annja said. “Zombies created by voodoo have been found to be living beings who are so steeped in their belief that their conscious minds can't accept that after their burial and ‘resurrection' they are not zombies. They truly believe they are.”

“What makes the sword disappear?” Garin asked, smiling.

“We weren't finished talking about you.” Annja took another bite of toast, then the melon, which was sweet and crisp.

“I was nine years old when I was given to Roux,” Garin went on. “I was twenty-one when he allied himself with the Maid.”

“He allied himself with Joan of Arc?”

Garin nodded. “He felt he had to. So we traveled with her and were part of her retinue.”

“Fancy word,” Annja teased, surprising herself.

“My vocabulary is vast. I also speak several languages.”

“Joan of Arc,” Annja reminded.

“Roux and I served with her. He was one of her counsels. When she was captured by the English, Roux stayed nearby.”

“Why didn't he rescue her?”

“Because he believed God would.”

“But that didn't happen?”

Garin shook his head. “We were…gone when the English decided to burn her at the stake. We arrived too late. Roux tried to stop them, but there were too many English. She died.”

Annja turned pale. It was all too fantastic to be believed, yet she didn't feel any sense of danger—just curiosity. Who is this man? she wondered. What is going on?

“Are you all right?” Concern showed on Garin's handsome face.

“I am. Just tired.”

He didn't appear convinced.

“What about the sword?” Annja asked.

Garin balanced his empty plate on his knee. “It was shattered. I watched them do it.”

“The English?”

He nodded. “Afterward, Roux and I realized we were cursed.”

Annja couldn't help herself. She smiled. Anyone could have read about the legendary sword. The details were open to interpretation or exaggeration, as all historical accounts were. Where will this elaborate hoax lead? she wondered.

Then she remembered how Bart McGilley had told her that the fingerprints—
friction ridges
—she'd pulled from the euro Roux had given her belonged to a suspect in a sixty-three-year-old homicide. She thought about the sword.

“Who cursed you?” she asked.

Garin hesitated, as if he were about to tell her an impossible thing. “I don't know what Roux thinks, but I believe we were cursed by God.”