The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [88]
“What sort of bitter things?”
“You,” he whispered. “You.”
Her hand glowed, and she held it up in front of her.
“I have no power left,” she said. “My djinni have all died or deserted me.”
And Nicolas began to laugh. Not his usual chopping, reserved, good-natured chuckling, but a full roar from the belly. She could only watch him in astonishment.
“My predicament amuses you?”
“You would use a sword to trim fingernails. You would use a cannon to snuff a candle.”
“What do you mean?”
Instead of answering her, he leaned suddenly and kissed her. It was as if some potent distillation had been poured between her lips, a tonic of every sort of love. He tasted like Nicolas, Hercule, Crecy, her son.
And he was gone.
“Uriel?” she asked the gray sky. “God?”
But no answer came.
She awoke in a cathedral, the largest she had ever seen, whose columns supported a roof so vast she had difficulty making it out. She heard priests chanting the Te Deum, smelled the incense.
Another dream?
But no —the columns were the boles of pine trees so enormous in girth that four men could not link hands around them. The Te Deum was in a language she did not recognize, and the incense was tobacco and the scent of popping, hissing pine resin in the fire nearby.
The chant broke off. “She wakes,” someone said in French.
Her eyes, stung to tears by the smoke, cleared again, and she saw an Indian sitting near her. He was handsome, in an alien sort of way.
“Adrienne?” That French was better.
“Veronique?”
“It is me. How do you feel?”
“How long have I slept?”
“You have been in and out of a fever for almost two weeks. You nearly died. I nearly lost you.”
She wanted to ask where she was, but she feared another conversation like she'd had with “Nicolas.” Instead, she touched her throat. “I'm thirsty.”
“I'll get water.”
A second later, lukewarm water splashed in her mouth. It tasted good. Crecy touched her forehead.
“Your fever seems to be gone at last,” she said cautiously.
Adrienne surveyed her body. Her left leg was in splints, and her ribs ached as she drew breath. She wondered how she had been traveling. “What of the others?” she asked.
“Hercule is dead.”
“I remember.” Words clotted on her tongue for a moment, then she went on. “The others?”
“More than half the crew, actually. Your students all survived—Elizavet included—and Father Castillion. Some of your guard was killed, fighting these Indians.”
“They are our enemies, then?” She glanced up at the Indian.
“They fired on my people,” the Indian said. “My people killed them. If their guns had stayed silent, they would still be alive.”
“Who are you?”
“I hesitate to give a name to someone as powerful as you. Suffice to say I am a sorcerer, something like you. We fought the Sun Boy together, though I was confused about the matter at the time. He survived, by the way. His army follows us, by perhaps two days, perhaps three. I am still too weak to tell.”
“Follows us to where?”
“To your kinfolk. To New Paris.”
She fumbled in her memory for such a place, came up with nothing.
He saw her confusion. “It was once named Mobile,” he offered. “The chief city of Louisiana.”
“Ah. Why do we go there?”
“Because we have matters to attend there, you and I,” he answered, and with that he stood and strode away.
“They have treated us well, but we are captives,” Crecy explained. “What he says about the soldiers might be true. It might have been a misunderstanding.”
“Most of my guard gone, no djinni left to serve me. It's as it was in the beginning, Crecy.”
“No. You have me. You have Linné and Breteuil and Lomonosov. They want to see you, but I have kept them away.”
“But I have no way to protect them. The Queen of Angels is dead.”
“Good. Then perhaps Adrienne can live again,” Crecy said.
“I'm not sure I—” But Crecy wouldn't want to hear that. “How badly am I hurt?”
“A broken leg, cracked ribs. You lost a lot of blood, and then the fever set in. It seems now that the fever is gone—you will be well soon.”
“Well? What does that matter? Unless you defeated Oliv—” She broke off. The Indian was back.