The Hermetica of Elysium (Elysium Texts Series) (32 page)

Her dreamy reverie was interrupted as Montrose joined her beneath the blankets. She sighed as he caught her up in his arms. She snuggled against his chest, the wiry hairs scratched her cheek, but it was a good scratch. She sighed again with pleasure.

“Were you frightened?” he asked softly.

“No. Not at all,” she answered.

“Not even when you were hanging above our heads?” He was incredulous.

“No. It was great fun. I’m eager to do it again.”

“I’m not,” he said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
HE
next night found them in the same situation: again Nadira drank the dirt-flavored elixir and a cup of wine. This time, however, instead of having her read from the book while she waited, Conti wrote a series of questions in large letters on William’s paper.

“Since you cannot hear me when I speak, try to read this instead.”

Nadira looked at what he had written. ‘Where is the book?’ and ‘Who is using it?’

“Can you write a question for me?” Montrose asked. Nadira and William looked at him with amazement.

“Certainly,” Conti was pleased to be asked.

“Ask where Alisdair and Garreth are.” Nadira watched Conti write in large block letters, ‘Where are Alisdair and Garreth?’

The letters began to link their serifs and dance. She laughed. As the room began its familiar spin, she leaned forward on the table, ready. Montrose quickly got up and took her in his arms again. She relaxed against him, letting her body sink down and fly up at the same time. Again! The thrill!

She looked about the room. Again, she saw the vibrant colors, but was disappointingly deaf. The three men were looking up at the ceiling, instead of at her white-clad body. She laughed, but it made no sound. Instead, she saw blue ripples emanate from her floating body and encompass the room. She laughed again, but then remembered her task. It seemed so pointless now. She wanted to go flying.

A movement caught her eye. Oh yes, monsieur wants her to do something.
What is
it? He wants me to go flying! I am a
bird,
she thought. White wings flapped at the corners of her eyes. Then she saw that movement again, that fluttering. It was Conti, tapping at a piece of paper on the table, looking up at the ceiling. He was getting so tiresome. Nevertheless, he was the one who had given her the potion. He was the originator of this wild ride. She swooped down and tried to read the paper.

The dancing letters would not hold still. She reached her hand out to grab them and make them stand at attention. Her hand went through the page, but as it did, her finger touched a large ‘A’. In that ‘A’ she smelled sweat and saw a flash of red hair. Yes, this ‘A’ was Alisdair. She thought about him, called his face to mind. He was the one always laughing and telling jokes. In her mind she embraced him, greeted him with a kiss on his cheek. There was a familiar
whoosh
and the blur of color before she burst out coming to a sudden stop over the tops of some trees in the moonlight. She looked down upon an army encamped by a large river. She brought the ‘A’ to mind and allowed her body to gracefully float through the trees to a large blanket held up with sticks. It had been raining, but it was clear now. Men moved back and forth among small campfires, she could hear nothing, but the images sharpened as she made the effort to look at everything.

Before this small tent were two sleeping forms rolled in blankets before a dying fire. She peeked inside. The tent did not shelter their bodies, but their baggage. She reached an ephemeral hand into the nearest rolled form. Images exploded in her brain, battles, journeys, heat, cold, damp, some kind of ship voyage rolled her side-to-side, she felt a twinge of nausea from that image. The images flew fast by her, allowing her only a peek before metamorphosing into something else.

An image of a red-haired woman appeared. She was young and pretty, her face full of freckles and a wide, playful smile. Nadira saw her embracing a large man. They were laughing and rolling on the ground. Large fires burned all around their images. The man pulled her dress off then reached for her massive breasts. Nadira pulled her hand out of the roll. This must be Alisdair. Her body floated to the larger roll. A tentative finger pushed through this man’s head. She got the images of roasted meats and huge crocks of ale. This must be Garreth. Her heart expanded with love for her companions. They were with an army. Whose?
My lord will ask when I get back.

She looked around, willed herself to rise above the trees again. She was learning quickly how to manipulate this environment. She closed her eyes and formed this thought, ‘whose army is this?’ An unknown force whirled her to a larger tent. This one had support poles holding sturdy canvas and was taller than a man. A pennant flew from the top post, blue and gold.
The French
. ‘Where are they?’ The flash took her inside the tent before a camp table where two candles burned on the edges of a rolled-out map. She leaned over the table, but as with the words back at the tower, these words and lines swirled and danced before her eyes.

She looked around the tent. The French commander lay sleeping in thick furs, a guard standing at his side. She moved her hand through the commander’s head. His dreams were of a delicate woman in green silk. She had smiling green eyes and golden hair not yet faded, though she was no longer young. Nadira pulled her hand out. How would she find out where they were? She concentrated ‘who can show me where they are?’ she asked. She shot like an arrow through the tent to the edge of the encampment where two guards stood leaning on spears gazing off into the river valley before them.

She placed a hand through the larger one’s head and immediately received the image of a great city, walled with crenellated towers. This still did not tell her what she needed to know. ‘Where!’ she demanded impatiently. The whirling motion was more violent this time and lasted longer. When she stopped moving she was poised over the enormous bed of what must be a very important man. Great quantities of drapery swathed the bed all the way around, the coverlets were of the finest embroidered silk. The bright colors called to her, ‘Touch me’. She did and felt their pride at being the coverlets of
the Holy Father
. She pulled her hand back. The Holy Father.
So. The French army is marching to
Rome
. This reminded her of Conti’s task.

Determined, she called to mind the book. She braced herself to be flung from the bedchamber, but instead the room spun around her slowly, rotating with her as the pivot point. The room stopped when she saw the sleeping pope. Behind him, she caught sight of a richly carved pedestal. A very familiar pedestal. She remembered seeing the book on her first trip, but had not known where it was. Now she knew. In the pope’s sleeping chambers.

Her mission completed, she thought of Montrose, thinking it would take her back to the tower. She brought to mind his face in better times, before the color had drained from it. She tried to remember him smiling.

Instead of the tower, she found herself outside on a summer’s day. Below her two young men were fighting with wooden swords. The fight was playful, for the faces were filled with joy and the animal pleasure of rough exercise. She watched as the taller slapped the smaller with the flat of the wooden sword and sent him sprawling to the grass. Both boys laughed heartily until a shutter snapped open in the wall behind them. A large man leaned out raising his fist and shouting. As before, Nadira could hear not a sound, but the look on the boys’ faces told her everything. The taller boy hung his head, the wood sword dropped limply into the grass. The defeated boy got up, brushed himself off and raised both hands over his head, as if to show the angry man in the window that he was not hurt.

Nadira moved closer to the window. The angry man’s face melted with tenderness. The scowl was replaced with pride and affection. He smiled and waved back to the smaller boy, then withdrew, closing the shutters. Below her, the small boy embraced the taller one, and then bent to pick up the fallen sword and tenderly curl the other boy’s fingers around the hilt. She could see the face of the smaller boy as he looked up admiringly at the taller one. Those icy blue eyes…this was Richard, the elder but smaller brother, his father’s precious heir.

Nadira did not have to see the face of the taller lad to know Montrose. The shoulders were still those of a boy but promised the breadth she knew now, the legs long and lanky, soon to be the striding pillars of a powerful man. She kept the image of those shoulders in her mind as she flew back to the tower this time, poised over Montrose’s neck. She saw her own body cradled in his arms. She saw her own sleeping face smile sweetly as she smiled in her floating body. She blinked, and opened her eyes. She was back.

“Nadira! Thank God!” William was the first to speak, “You’ve been gone forever!”

Montrose greeted her with a kiss. She hugged him. Conti pushed a glass of wine toward her across the table.

“Are you quite well?” he asked.

“I am. I would like some of that wine.”

“I think we all would,” Montrose said, reaching for a cup. William’s hand was shaking as he tried to get his cup to his mouth. The wine spilled all over his fingers, threatening the paper below.

“Have a care, Will.” Conti slid the paper out of danger.

Nadira drank her wine and thought about her adventure. This time there was no residual dreaminess. She felt alert and clear. She finished her wine. “First things, first,” she said, looking at Montrose, “Alisdair and Garreth are healthy and well fed. They are warm and secure. I cannot say they are exactly safe, for they are traveling as soldiers in the French army.” She was prepared to discuss the particulars, but all three men were looking at her with such amazement she faltered. “What?”

Montrose shook his head as if to clear it. “You saw them?”

“Yes. Garreth dreams of roasting mutton and casks of ale. Alisdair dreams of his Brigit. I saw them. The French army is marching on Rome. They have a huge army, many fires. They are camped by a large river. I cannot tell you which one.” William began to cross himself, but Conti’s hand stopped him before he completed the last sweep across his chest.

“She is no witch, William. You know this yourself. Don’t you?” he added with emphasis when William’s face drained of blood. He released William’s hand. “And the book? Did you find it?”

“Ah, yes, monsieur. It rests in an honored place in the pope’s bedchamber.”

Conti looked grave. “I hope he has trouble finding a Turk to translate these recipes.”

“What do you mean?” Nadira asked.

“The book has many items of interest in it. Most can be found in other sources. However, the ingredients of that elixir are in Moorish. Most of it in code, as well.” He rubbed his chin through the thick beard. “The last pope was surrounded by fools. Perhaps this one is as well. It may be years before that text is deciphered.” He smiled hopefully. “Yes, it will be ages before this secret gets out.”

Montrose made a wry face, “Rome keeps a circulating library, monsieur. Surely you know that.”

Conti’s eyebrows went up. “Certainly I know that. I’m surprised that you do.”

Montrose shook his head; “I have been my brother’s bodyguard for ten years now, monsieur. I have seen every great library on the continent. Unless the Holy Father keeps this book away, there will be hundreds reading it very soon.”

“And then hundreds flying about at night watching us as we sleep and spying on our dreams.” William said with a shaky laugh.

“Among other things,” Nadira teased.

“No, no. There is little danger of that. At least the hundreds you worry about. He will keep this book near him. If it were that easy I would be out there spying on the prince’s wine cellar or finding the best truffles,” Conti joked. “But there is a reason I am not flying about at night, and that reason is why Brother Henry is a ruined man,” he finished seriously. “The danger is that there may be just one man, one dangerous enough to use this ability to harm others, not in the harmless hundreds who may just pick up this book, or brew a partial potion.”

“Nadira is special. She does not have the fears we all carry.” Conti turned to Nadira earnestly. “Is it not true that as your thoughts flow through your head, the very images of those thoughts appear before you?”

“Yes, that is how it is.”

“In another person,” Conti explained, “panic would bring forth visions of monsters and demons which would terrify the poor soul, seemingly for an eternity. Nadira told me this morning that to come back to us in the tower she only had to think of us or of her body to steer herself home. A man being savaged by the hideous monsters of his fears will not stop to think clearly or plan his next thought. He will be tortured until the elixir’s power over him ceases. By that time his mind would be gone, destroyed by the visions he saw and experienced. Even if he were not totally destroyed, he would not willingly taste the elixir again.”

“That is what Henry meant, then, about the book taking care of itself.” Montrose said thoughtfully. After a moment, he turned suspicious eyes on Conti. “Then what was your need for the book, monsieur? What was your purpose for intercepting it?”