“My father was Bertrand de Vienne, a king. I never met him, but was raised by my uncle Girart at court. Charlemagne fought for seven years against Girart, until they were reconciled and joined together,” Aude said in a clear voice. The heat of her blushing turned her skin red, but in the gloom of the tent it was unlikely Fierabras could see. “I am a child of a king, and I am pure. I can take the scepter in the morning, and you can escape to our camp in the confusion, dressed as a monk. Find Bishop Turpin, and give him this.” She took the ring of betrothal from her finger and gave it to Fierabras, who accepted it with trembling hands.
“But what if they find you out?” asked Fierabras. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I am asking for the only chance I can find to save my brother, the path my Queen of Heaven has placed before me.”
Aude put her hands on either side of Fierabras’s face, and felt his tears stream over her fingers. Then he kissed her gently on the forehead and took off his own rings to give to her.
“I will meet you back at the Frankish camp when this is all over.”
“Aude… ”
From outside the tent they heard someone address the prince.
“Go, before they find both of us in here.”
Then he said, “I’m so sorry.”
Aude trembled as she watched Fierabras dress in the monk’s habit and then slip out the back, glancing one more time at her before vanishing.
Horns sounded in the distance. Olivier’s horn. There was just one more thing to do.
The scepter was smaller than she had imagined, barely the length of her forearm, and encased in a coffin-like leaden container. The rod was made of a dark metal, the sides rough, as if it had been scraped into being from a larger piece of ore. Upon the end was, as Fierabras had said, a shriveled hand. More like a claw.
A voice at the door commanded something in a language Aude didn’t understand, and in her fear she reached out and grasped the scepter. As she did, it grasped her back.
Aude had expected a sensation of growing, but it was far from that. The little talons of the scepter dug deep into her hand, piercing through skin and wiggling in between her bones. The pain traveled up her arms like liquid ice in her veins, stopping just short of her heart.
Then she was ripped in half. Part of her swelled and grew and filled with fury, she could sense that on the edge of her mind, almost as if her being had transformed into a second melody to the song of her soul. But there was no true consciousness there, just an awareness of its rage and fury. The giant.
Her mind, her self as she knew it, was pulled down into a separate plane of existence. This raw, black world smelled of loam and mold — the roiling chaos that Fierabras spoke of with such fear. If she concentrated hard enough, she could see through the mist a gathering of shadows, the one that was now her body and the approaching army of the Franks. And Olivier, too. His sword, Hauteclere, glittered brightest of all. For only a moment, though, before the blackness thickened.
Olivier had not been prepared for such a sight, in spite of Floripas’s warning. Upon seeing the giant, he wished that Roland had been selected for this task, and then hated himself for such a thought. Roland had the stomach for this sort of thing, for these hulking beasts and horrors out of Revelation.
A giant it was, surrounded by yellow-accoutered monks, all humming in a low chant. It rose close to twelve feet high, with sloping shoulders covered in boil-covered skin, pock-marked, and the color of curdled milk. From its mouth emitted an unholy stench; Olivier found his eyes watering through his visor. Sulfur, perhaps. This giant who was once Fierabras had but one eye, black and pupil-less, and Olivier could never tell where it was looking. He suspected that it got on better by scent than by sight, anyway, the way it sniffed the air with its huge muzzle, somewhat more like a pig’s snout than a man’s face. Coarse brown hair covered its body, across its oddly sunken chest and down its vast, muscle-corded arms. For all its mass, it still moved with surprising agility.
Olivier was not a born warrior; unlike Roland, who was at his happiest when he was hilt-deep in a Saracen. For Olivier, fighting required intense focus. Every step he had to think. And he had never been faced with such an adversary, let alone one ringed by nefarious, pagan priests. The more they chanted, the more difficult it was for Olivier to concentrate.
Olivier. She could sense him now. Even brighter than Hauteclere. Because she was hurting him — or the beast her body had become was — and he was hurting her. With every blow, the blackness in which she found herself shuddered, and for a moment she could see through.
It would pass. It would have to pass. She had to find the source of the rage, and save Olivier. She could already smell his blood.
Aude was fumbling through her mind in the roiling darkness when she sensed someone else. One of the yellow monks. He materialized before her like a candle in the shadowed void. Part of Aude knew that such brightness ought to be a relief, but though it was golden yellow, there was an off-ness to its hue that made her afraid. It was more frightening than the darkness.
“You are not the prince,” said the yellow monk, though the voice was in her head. “How dare you interrupt the ritual.”
“Where are we?” she asked.
“In the eye of the beast. A world within a world. How came you to this mystery?” he asked.
Aude knew the monk’s presence meant danger, but it also meant something else: an ebb and flow. She was not trapped as she had imagined. If they had both entered the eye of the giant, as he said, she could escape it. She could travel.
“I came here of my own volition,” she said. “I am here to save my brother.”
“Your brother is nothing but vermin to the Nameless,” said the yellow monk.
“But the Queen of Heaven has sent me, and given me purpose,” Aude said.
In that moment she conjured up the image of the Queen of Heaven as she had always imagined her. Not the mild mother to Christ, but the reigning and rightful queen, the bride of God Himself. Terrible and bright, her eyes kindled with holy fire and her hair streaming behind her, a great crown on her head made of the firmament. Part of Aude understood in that moment that She was greater than any mortal could comprehend, that She was older and more powerful and more terrifying. That all of Aude’s own prayers had gone deeper and farther than she had ever imagined.
The churning darkness around her seemed closer to that version of the Queen of Heaven, the one she was understanding now for the first time.
“I see,” said the yellow monk, and then he dissipated.
Where he stood was a patch of light. Aude, what was left of her, followed it. As she moved, it moved. One step, another. The strange yellow light illuminated little as it bobbed ahead. But it was better than being trapped in the dark.
There was blood in his eyes. Olivier lost track of time, of his many parries and blows, of how many times he had fallen. But the beast, this giant named Fierabras, did not relent. He could wound it, draw its blood, but only water came out of its wounds. And that fetid stench. And sorrow and blackness. There were others watching — Charlemagne himself had arrived, eager for the spectacle, and Roland besides, and Turpin and the other peers — but where?