Killingford: The Hieromonk's Tale, Book Two Read online

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  DEDICATION

  L’ENVOI

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BORGO PRESS FICTION BY ROBERT REGINALD

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2004, 2013 by Robert Reginald

  Part of this book was previously published in different form under the title The Dark-Haired Man.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  DEDICATION

  For the members of the English Department at Gonzaga University between 1965-1969, to whom I’ll always be grateful for their very kind advice and consent, especially:

  Fran J. Polek

  William P. Safranek

  Franz K. Schneider

  John P. Sisk

  (with thanks to Dean Patricia Terry for her help)

  —And for Katherine Kurtz,

  for giving me permission

  L’ENVOI

  But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and notwithstanding go out to meet it.

  —Thucydides

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  For those of you who care about such things, this novel is an alternate history set in a Europe whose geographic features are similar or even identical to our own, with the major (but not sole) divergence from our timeline having occurred in the year 363 AD, when Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate, Constantine I’s cousin, was not killed in battle against the Persians (as he was in our world), but lived on for another forty years.

  For the geographic and personal names herein, I used mostly Slavic, Hungarian, German, and Greek models; there are no silent letters in such constructs. Forward accents are intended to provide guides to stress in Slavic words, such emphasis often appearing in locations unfamiliar to westerners; in Hungarian names, however, the accents merely indicate differences in vowel sounds. I’ve employed circumflexes in Greek words to distinguish between the letters epsilon and êta, and omicron and ômega. Umlauts can denote gutteral vowel sounds—or dress up otherwise pedestrian names. The letter “ß” stands for “ss.”

  In the end, of course, I have my own ideas about pronunciation, and each reader will undoubtedly have hers or his. Mangle them as ye will, folks, and no one will be the wiser, unless you actually hear me read a passage someday, and then you can tell me, with as haughty an air as possible, that I’ve got it all wrong! I do try to have fun when creating these things; some of the names here have been invented from the flimsiest of constructs, bearing no discernible relationship to anything that anyone but I will ever be able to determine. Oh, well!

  PROLOGUE

  “I ENDLESSLY REPEAT THE STORY OF THOSE DAYS”

  Anno Domini 1241

  Anno Juliani 881

  Always, the marriage!

  Her couselors were ever at her heels, nipping away like a pack of curs worrying a fox, and barking and snarling all the while. Gad, if she could just get them to SHUT UP and leave her alone for half a day!

  But of course, they never would.

  Maybe, she thought, just maybe she should make a virtue of necessity, as the old saying went. Perhaps she should find someone who could easily be controlled, and, uh, wouldn’t be capable of siring an heir—at least while she was still technically able of producing one. One of the womanish sirs who huddled so closely ’round the throne, as if to keep warm from the heat that she generated as the center of the state—someone like Count Maltesia or Lord Baniszow. Now, they wouldn’t be any trouble!

  After all, it wasn’t as if there were any lack of heirs. Au contraire: they proliferated in each and every corner of Kórynthia, and even outside the realm—first, second, third, or greater cousins, all wanting to sit high—so high—on that Obsidian Throne. Oh, if only they understood how hard and uncaring that seat really was!

  She would pick one of them, in the end. She would have to, or risk civil war when she was gone.

  She walked over to the floor-length metal mirror mounted on the wall of her bedroom. It was an ancient artifact, passed down, so the story went, from old Tighris himself, primus of their line of monarchs and mages, whose origins were fogged amidst ungraspable wisps of legend and fable. This great shining speculum, this self-reflecting slab of albaurum, was a major seat of power—this much she knew, this much she could ken through her own magely senses. It was no ordinary transit device.

  “What are you?” she murmured out loud. Her own image, the reversed portrait of Queen Grigorÿna herself, mouthed the words back at her.

  Then: “Who are you?” said the picture in the mirror, and the unexpected retort caused her to step back.

  She slowly and carefully reached out to touch the surface of the white-gold instrument, and almost had the sense, that if she had only known how, she could have roamed the universe itself. But she didn’t have the knowledge, and there was no one left to teach her. No one but...but...well, she couldn’t go there, didn’t dare to go there.

  She sighed, long and loud, and finally turned away. She walked over to the open exit to the balcony, stepped outside, and placed her two hands on the stone railing. A bronze gargoyle grinned wickedly back at her from the left-hand wall, and a cuprous dragon’s head snarled back a warning from the right. “Keep your distance,” it said.

  Where was she? What was she doing?

  Ah, yes. She breathed in the cool night air, savoring the attar of the aridian blossoms that only unveiled their large pale faces to the dark.

  Her history. Her history of the Great War in Nova Europa that had been waged when she was a little girl. The conflict that had destroyed so many of her family and so much of the heritage of two nations.

  She’d now completed her chronology of the events leading up to the turning point of the war—of how the Court of Paltyrrha had been seemingly subverted from within, how her grandfather, King Kipriyán III, had been plagued on all sides with the deterioration of the body politic, how a series of attacks and outright murders had pushed the old monarch towards conflict with Pommerelia, and how the strange albino mage known as Melanthrix had somehow been ever at the center of events—and, many believed, the cause of them.

  The problem was this: s
he could find dozens of sources giving accounts of the climactic battle itself—of Killingford—but none that told her what had happened at the very end. They were all...muddled—yes, that was the right word. Even the participants did not understand the events.

  Those whom she would question were either dead...or worse. And she dare not step beyond the boundaries imposed upon her by...well, by those who could not be named.

  But Killingford had happened in the year 845 of the Era of the Emperor Julian—and that was thirty-six years ago. None of the major commanders who’d participated in the war between Kórynthia and Pommerelia still lived. Only some of the junior officers.

  What about one of them? But who?

  As a breeze from the Hanging Garden ruffled her dark hair, the Queen thought and thought and thought. Who was left?

  And then it hit her: Lord Maurin! The Count of Kosnick! Somewhere she’d read a history of the war by...—who was it, Duodène d’Écosse?—that had cited the Count’s memoir of Killingford as one of his primary sources for the great battle. And Maurin, she well knew, was still active, a man of perhaps five-and-sixty years. She would send a note to Kosnicksberg in the morning. Maybe he could tell her what she needed to know.

  * * * *

  Several days later, on the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, also known as Michaelmas, the Count Maurin III was ushered into her private conference room.

  “Leave us!” she ordered Master Svyet, when Maurin had settled on the settee across from her. He was older than she’d remembered, with hair going white and waist going wide—or at least wider than it had been. She hoped his mind hadn’t followed suit.

  “To what do we owe this honor, Majesty?” he finally asked, sipping slowly at the ruddy wine.

  “We wish your assistance with a tome of historia we are preparing,” she said. “We require your memories of that time three and one-half decades ago when our nation was at war with the Kingdom of Pommerelia. Do you still recall those days?”

  The nobleman very deliberately put his drink down on a square wooden table set to one side of his chair. Then he looked up at her, and stared unblinkingly into her eyes; finally, she was the one who had to look away.

  “Majesty,” he said at last, “there isn’t a night that passes that I don’t revisit Killingford and all the horrors that I experienced there. I can’t escape those memories. There isn’t a day that I don’t recall all of the men who died on those Pommerelian hills and fields—died senselessly, in my estimation.”

  “That is not the official position of the state,” Grigorÿna said.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But it is my position, Lady. And I was there—you weren’t. With respect.”

  “Would you tell me about it?” she finally asked.

  “How can I not?” he said. “I relate it constantly to myself—to anyone, actually, who wants to hear (or doesn’t). I endlessly repeat the story of those days. How can I not, Majesty?”

  “Then do tell me. Please.”

  And then he began unraveling his tale of the greatest battle that Nova Europa had ever experienced.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “HE WANTS US TO FEEL FEAR”

  Anno Domini 1205

  Anno Juliani 845

  During the early Spring the preparations for the expedition moved forward rapidly. By mid-April, the first contingents of troops were already gathering at Katonaí Field west of Paltyrrha, and on the Feast of Saint Zênôn, King Kipriyán decided to conduct a formal review of the soldiers who had assembled there. An official inspection was ordered for the first part of the morning, at tritê.

  An hour before that time, General Lord Feognóst was in a state of unrestrained panic. Thousands of men were milling about on the muddy plain, trying to find their positions. Horses were still being saddled, draft animals had yet to be harnessed, several heavy supply wagons had tipped over, and all was in chaos.

  “Get those men in order,” the general shouted at Commander Reményi.

  His voice was hoarse.

  “And you!” he yelled, turning to the cowering figure of Commander Rónai, “get those bloody beasts back under control.”

  Slowly but certainly, the impossible was accomplished, and the conscripts began to form in orderly ranks, company by company. The few mounts that absolutely wouldn’t cooperate were taken back to the stables, but most were restrained and suitably decked out for parade. Their riders stood stiffly at attention beside their brushed and curried steeds, sweaty and uncomfortable in black leather boots polished to a “fare-thee-well” and bright new dress uniforms that designated, by color and cut, each person’s rank and place.

  They were as ready as they were going to be when the king and his sons finally appeared, riding out gloriously, streamers flying, from Saint Ignatios’s Gate. Kipriyán paused for a moment to look out over the field, his good eye squinting against the sun.

  Then he cleared his voice, and loudly intoned: “Very impressive, general. Kudos to you all.”

  And he saluted them in grand style.

  “Huzzah!” came the general cry, as five thousand men responded as one. “Axios!” they cried. “He is worthy! Long live King Kipriyán!”

  Then the great monarch, resplendent in his finest military armor, neatly dismounted into the sea of mud that stretched before him, and with his boots squelching, slowly made his way through the ranks, commenting to this man and that on his fine appearance. Finally, he came to the head of the file, saluted the general, and offered his congratulations on a job well done.

  Lord Feognóst smiled with pride, and bowed in acknowledgment, jauntily returning the king’s salute. Then he unsheathed his sword, and carefully placing it hilt-down into the wet ground, abruptly fell on the sharp blade, killing himself almost instantly.

  A moment of wretched silence settled over the soldiers of Katonaí Field as the lifeless body of their commander slowly toppled sideways into the mud. Feognóst’s final grin was still frozen on his face.

  “Nooo!” shouted the king, leaning over the bloody corpse.

  Prince Arkády leaped from his mount and pulled his father back from the gruesome scene.

  “Nicky,” he ordered his brother, “take the king back to Paltyrrha.”

  Then to the assembled troops, he shouted: “Who’s second in command here?”

  “I am, sir,” a shaken Rónai said.

  The officer stepped forward and saluted.

  “Dismiss the assembly,” the prince commanded, “and sequester the body. I want a death-probe done at once. You’re temporarily promoted to general, subject to confirmation by the king.”

  “Yes, Highness,” the soldier said, promptly turning to his junior officers.

  An hour later, Arkády received a report from Fra Jánisar Cantárian, the king’s physician, stating that the victim’s mind had been wiped almost completely clean, that there was only the hint of a compulsion, although one had certainly been in force, and that Jánisar could not tell the prince how the deed was done or who had done it.

  “That’s not a great deal of help, Ján...,” Arkády began, as he finished reading the doctor’s statement.

  “Well, sir, it wasn’t intended to be,” Cantárian said, throwing up his hands in resignation. “Although I’ve certainly tried, I have to admit that this is beyond my abilities. You need very specialized help to scry this kind of magic.”

  “Can’t you even venture a guess?” the prince said.

  “Only this,” Jánisar said, “that it comes somewhere from the east. Out beyond Byzantion, I’d say. That’s speculation, of course, but I think it’s a reasonable one. Although nothing about this business seems at all reasonable to me. I also think someone’s mixing magical traditions, which you’re not supposed to be able to do, but there it is.”

  “So how do we combat these attacks?” Arkády asked.

  The doctor shook his head.

  “I wish I knew, Highness. Kill the one responsible, I’d say, although how you find him and how you do the de
ed are other matters entirely. My only real advice is the obvious one: be careful. Be extraordinarily careful. Your usual defenses won’t work here. You’re better off to employ cold, hard steel. And I’ll offer another guess for you, too: whoever’s doing this will keep on killing over and over again until he’s stopped. He enjoys it now.”

  Arkády rubbed his bearded jaw in weariness.

  “Who do you think he is?” the prince asked.

  Jánisar snorted.

  “He could be anybody at court,” the physician said. “He has to have been present often enough to know the people here, to understand their habits and patterns and the routine of court life, and to gain access to them in some intimate way. This is no outsider, I think. This is one of our own, milord.”

  “God’s teeth!” Arkády said. “And here I’ve been thinking that this monster was some fiend from Hell trying to claw his way into....”

  “Well, sir,” the physician said, “I very much doubt it. To me everything points to someone with a grudge, somebody who’s been holding a grievance inside for a very long time.

  “Just look at what’s been happening,” he continued. “One by one this individual has been attacking different members of the government, none of them key persons in and of themselves, but each building upon the others. He wants us to feel fear. He feeds on that fear. He laps it up like a catamount slurping blood. It’s that feeling, that sick feeling, of somebody always watching us, that really spooks me, and makes me think that catching this killer and putting an end to his madness will be a very difficult task indeed. On the surface he’ll look completely normal, just like anyone else. Underneath, of course, he’s monstrous, but you’ll never know that. Until he makes a mistake, of course. I just hope there are still some of us left then....”

  “What do you mean?” the prince asked.

  “I repeat what I said earlier,” the physician said. “This one won’t stop, not ever, until he’s physically or mentally destroyed by one of us. He has a plan that he intends to fulfill, a scheme that none of us understands yet, and until we do, until we put ourselves into his mind and comprehend what motivates him, we won’t be able to find him, unless he’s a lot less adept than I think he is. To my mind, this is the worse threat the kingdom has ever faced, worse by far than the Nörrlanders or the Walküri or even”—he laughed—“the Dark-Haired Man.”