The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [30]
Maybe it was best that she die.
It was a brief thought, a coward's thought. The stars dissolved from patterns of light into spidery matrices of gravity and affinity, and her servant angels, her djinni crowded around.
Mistress?
Her attacker's body was a complicated minuet of matter and spirit, but its dancers were mostly one compound, water, which was in turn made of phlegm, aer, and lux. At her silent command, the djinn split each ferment of water into constituent atoms. The dance became a riot.
The fellow never even managed a scream but fell away from her, a tongue of flame licking from his gaping mouth, twin jets from his nostrils, his eyes popping like fireworks.
Without him to support her, she fell ungracefully. She barely felt the cold earth, but the stars were still there, untroubled.
Fever slashes came after that. People around her, then someone lifting her, Crecy's face. Father Castillion, another bloody knife, a castle of pain that built higher and higher and finally collapsed. And then, at last, darkness.
But not silence. She felt she was in a great mausoleum, for the voice echoed many times.
I'm sorry. My enemies must have found you. They are everywhere. But I will help. I will help to heal you.
Apollo—
Do not exert yourself. Sleep.
So she did.
Adrienne woke, her hands resting on the quilts mounded upon her. She was nine years old, in her father's house, the chateau at Montchevreuil. She had the fever, she remembered, and she was cold. But where was Grandpapa? He had been here with her, and, despite what the doctor said, he made her know she would be safe, that the black angels had not come for her yet.
“Grandpapa?”
“Ah. You wake. How do you feel?”
The voice wrapped her more securely and warmly than any blanket—for an instant only, and then that security turned to sudden fright. The gentle words had the same rustic accent her grandfather had spoken with, but it was not the same voice.
She turned toward the sound and saw Father Castillion, and it all came back. She was not nine, she was thirty-two. Where could twenty-three years go, even for a moment? What was wrong with her?
He must have seen the confusion and the terror, and he put a hand on hers. He was in a chair; and beyond him, in another, sat Crecy, chin dropped down to her breast. “All is well,” the priest said. “Your wound was grave, but God has given you the strength to survive it.”
She remembered Father Castillion standing over her, and pain. “God gave you the skill to heal, it seems.”
“He blessed me with knowledge, yes. I studied the healing arts and learned many peculiar things in China. Yet I know my measure. If my hands had been the only ones at work, you would no longer be among us. You lost a grievous amount of blood.” He gripped her hand. “Do you see Him now, among us? Can't you see He is here?”
“He is here,” she repeated. But she did not mean God. She knew from whom the miracle had come.
Nicolas, her son. She had given him life, and now he had done the same for her.
“Who did this to me?” she asked.
Crecy started awake then, with a sudden gasp, her fingers flying to the hilt of her sword. Then she understood and relaxed somewhat.
“I told you to wake me,” she said to the priest, an angry edge in her voice.
“She only now woke,” he said.
“It's true, Crecy. We've only spoken a few words. I was just asking who tried to kill me, and why.”
“It was Karoly Dimitrov, the Orthodox priest we brought along with us. I have asked questions, and believe he must have been a spy for the metropolitan.”
“I see.” She frowned. “He was going to cut my throat, as Irena's throat was cut. Do you suppose he killed her, too?”
Crecy hesitated. “Perhaps we should discuss these matters when you are stronger.”
“Discuss them now, please.”
“Very well. I've believed Irena was going to meet her lover when she was killed. And, as you say, her throat was cut ear to ear. But I have a reliable report that at that time Father Dimitrov was on board the Dobrynya, which never