X
Realizing that the Shining Trapezohedron is something more than a jewel, some cursed and terrible artifact that can bring you only doom, you raise your arm to cast it into the chasm behind the Yellow King’s throne. At least, you intend to. But while the signal races from your mind, it never seems to reach your hand, which stays where it is, gripping the stone tightly.
You understand that you are no longer in control of yourself. That you are a puppet, being pulled by strings that you cannot see or imagine. Though your will screams against it, you turn your gaze toward the stone in your hand.
XI
You cannot resist the pull of the stone, and inside the Shining Trapezohedron you see at first only swirling clouds of red and black. Then the clouds part, and you are looking into the past and the future. You see yourself entering the Jeweled Remora in Lankhende, taking a table near the hearth, in spite of the heat and closeness of the night. There you meet with your companions, and you speak of your quest for the jewel. You keep your voices lowered, but a stranger watches you avidly from the shadows.
From the depths of the stone, you hear a voice at once strange and familiar, reciting a rhyme that stirs dim memories that seem to come from another life: “… and much of Madness, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot.”
Ordo Virtutum
Wendy N. Wagner
Hildegard leaned on her walking staff and picked her way around a mound of rubble. Mud and heaps of fieldstone covered the whole knoll of Rupertsberg, obliterating the pleasant hill where she’d chosen to build her new priory. The cost of construction, she supposed. At least the monks’ house was completed, its thatched roof and whitewashed walls in proper order, the whole structure cozy and inviting as it sat on its sandstone outcropping above the Rhine. The river’s waters whispered to themselves as they hurtled over their rocky bed, as if the river were still talking about the man it had brought to the Benedictines.
“It’s only a few more steps, Mother Hildegard.” Sister Richardis took Hildegard’s elbow.
Hildegard eased free of the girl’s grip. “I am well enough, Sister. Do not trouble yourself.” She looked around. The green of the untrammeled ground here at the edge of the construction site compelled her with its peace and viriditas — its lively green energy. She wished she could absorb some of that green to help her shake off the effects of her latest illness. She needed to be strong for her nuns. She had brought them to Rupertsberg to help them focus on the beauty of God’s creation, and now their strange guest threatened her hard work.
She took the last few steps toward the monks’ quarters and rapped on the door. It flew open, and Marten’s pale, nervous face peered out. He was only nine, and while promised to the service, was not yet a novice. She smiled at the boy. “Bless you, my child. Is Brother Arnold or Father Justin available?”
He shook his head hard. “Father Justin was called back to Disibodenberg. And Brother Arnold is resting.”
“I am awake now,” a reedy voice grumbled. The monk nudged the boy aside and gave Hildegard a solemn bow. He was as much in awe of her as the boy these days. “Holy Hildegard. How may I be of service?”
Hildegard waved Richardis inside and then followed her within the humble cottage. The space felt warmer and more homey than their own — but of course, this house was completed. The nuns’ more expansive quarters still awaited a real floor.
“Brother, why did the builders do no work today? I saw them arrive in the morning and their cart is still here, but there is no sign of them.”
Brother Arnold took a step backward. “I did ask the man.”
Hildegard brought her walking stick down with a thump. “Asked who?”
“The man from the river,” Marten interjected. He took a quick step behind Brother Arnold, eyeing Hildegard’s stick.
“The man from the river.” Hildegard sank onto the bench beside the fireplace. Yesterday, the workmen had pulled a stranger out of the rapids, tending him as best they could, but they had finally called for Hildegard in the night, and when she walked into the little infirmary, she’d seen something in the stranger’s sharp gray eyes that made her wish she could turn her back on the man. She felt for the rosary on her belt and squeezed its familiar beads. God had warned her that before this place would be her sanctuary, it would first be her greatest test. And now she knew the test was begun.
“He claims he is St. Rupertus returned, and the local men have gathered around him.” Brother Arnold dropped onto the bench beside Hildegard. Save for his cheerfully round belly, a legacy of his more comfortable life at the abbey in Disibodenberg, he was a small man, no taller than Hildegard. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Sister Richardis knelt before Hildegard and clasped her hands about the older woman’s. “I told you this place was trouble, dear Mother. Our visions…”
The nun’s hands trembled around Hildegard’s. Hildegard took a deep breath. Sister Richardis had become her dearest companion, her helpmate, her friend. She would not let this sweet young woman be harmed by anything. She would not let harm come to any of her nuns.
She forced herself to her feet. “St. Rupertus and his mother, the wise woman Berta, joined our Lord many long years ago. Anyone who claims otherwise is a liar.”
“But he says he is Rupertus!” the boy blurted. “And he can do things!”
Hildegard’s lips thinned. “What kinds of things?”
Three workmen stood outside the makeshift infirmary, their weather-beaten faces sullen and coarse. They stepped forward as the nuns approached, closing off the path. “No one disturbs His Holiness,” the one said. He held a long hoe in his hand, the sort stone workers used to spread mortar, and for the first time Hildegard realized how intimidating a weapon a simple hand tool could be.
She raised her hand in benediction. “Bless you, my son. I am here to check on my patient.”
“No one disturbs His Holiness.”
“If it weren’t for my help last night, the man would be dead. Now step aside.” She took a step forward.
The man’s tongue flickered at the corner of his mouth as he thought over what she said and then spat on the ground. The phlegm glistened, yellow and thick against the mud-worn ground. “Just you.”
Hildegard glanced at Sister Richardis, whose freckles stood out against her fair skin. She held herself bravely, but everything about this situation clearly made the young nun uncomfortable. Brother Arnold and Marten waited farther back on the path. Hildegard returned her attention to the workmen. Only the speaker looked at her. The other two stared at Richardis like hungry dogs in front of a fresh kill.
“Fine. Just me.” She leaned close to Richardis and whispered in her ear: “Take Marten and go warn the other sisters. No one is to leave their quarters. Bar the doors. I will rejoin you as quickly as I can.”
Then Hildegard drew herself up to her full height and strode past the men, her chin high and her shoulders squared: the image of confidence. They could not hear her heart pound in her chest as she passed.
She pushed open the door of the building that, when complete, would house the priory’s kitchen, and crinkled her nose at the scents that flooded out: the strong musk of working men and the sharper tang of medicinal herbs, all of it underwritten by a pungent and foreign smell that was something like hot tar. Stepping inside, she saw the man from the river sitting up in bed, now clad in a close-fitting tunic of homespun.