Another thing Emeric's officers learned, and quickly, was not to lie to him. The man was scared but honest. Emeric knew the value of tolerating failure, up to a point. Besides, he'd come over those roads himself and wasn't surprised, nor did he blame the officer. This early in spring—which hadn't arrived in the mountains yet—the roads were just mud or still waist-deep in snow.
He waved dismissively. 'If we have to move without them, we will. If we have to lay siege, then we'll have time to ship them in.'
The relief on the officer's face was amusing, but best not to let it go too far. 'Two weeks.
He noted that the Croat cavalry captain was looking even more tense.
He waited. The man simply couldn't take it after a minute's silence. 'Your Majesty. The scouts you ordered sent out south . . . seven of them have not come back. One squad.'
The king nodded. 'Find them. You'll find their bodies or their mounts. Then, when you've found what became of them, find the nearest village and crucify all the men. Make the women watch.'
Emeric raised a forefinger. 'You have eight days.'
PART V
Emeric erased the circle and the pentacle scratched in a section of his pavilion where he'd pulled back the carpets to expose the naked soil. Then he eliminated all other traces of the ritual he'd followed to reach the chief of his spies on Corfu, cleaned himself, and put the carpets back in place. The work had to be done carefully, since he was only guided by the light of a few candles. Night had long since fallen.
As always, Emeric was irritated by having to do such menial labor himself, instead of ordering a servant. But, he dared not do otherwise. Even the King of Hungary—even a king suspected by his subjects to be a man-witch— could not afford to have anyone observe him at such times. Not, at least, anyone knowledgeable in such matters, and it was always difficult to tell who might be.
Several features of those rituals were satanic in nature, not simple witchcraft. Hungary was, after all, a predominantly Christian country—and those portions that were not Christian were mostly Muslim. His polyglot subjects would tolerate a great deal, true, but not open trafficking with
Emeric didn't particularly fear rebellion, as such. His army was quite capable of crushing any combination of peasants or townsmen, as it had demonstrated several times over the past years. The problem lay with the army itself. None of Emeric's officers was burdened with any great moral sentiments. Still, the open use of satanic rituals would, if nothing else, give an ambitious general the handle to organize and lead a military overthrow of the Hungarian dynasty.
Emeric did not follow all of his aunt's advice. But he had never failed to observe Countess Bartholdy's strictures on this score:
Finally done, he soothed his irritation by ordering wine and cuffing the servant who brought it. He finished the goblet, ordered another, and cuffed the servant again.
Throughout, it never occurred to him—as it had never occurred to him before—to wonder why his aunt had given him those secrets in the first place, starting when he was a boy of six. To wonder why she had violated, seemingly, her own rule.
* * *
Like his master, Petros Fianelli erased all the symbols and signs of the ritual himself. In his case, not in the luxury of a king's pavilion but in the squalor of a basement owned by one who appeared to be a simple seller of secondhand goods in Kerkira, the chief town of Corfu. Which, indeed, Fianelli was—even if most of his income came from the criminal ring he operated on the island, as well as the subsidy he received from the King of Hungary.
There was only one way to perform these rituals on Corfu: to create the symbols in fire. Each one was created on a special platen made of obsidian, filled with oily cotton, fed from a reservoir of defiled holy oil. When the oil was lit, the symbol burned in the element that Corfu could not counter, the Devil's own. But the platens had to be carefully hidden when he was done. If anyone found them, it would be awkward. If anyone who understood what they were for ever found them, the consequences would be dire.
That done, he took the taper and mounted the stairs to the kitchen. It was a large kitchen, centered around a large table. Little cooking was actually done in the kitchen, these days, since Fianelli had quietly murdered his last woman a few months earlier after she'd become tiresome. Had her murdered, rather, by two of his three bully boys. Fianelli hadn't wanted to risk it himself, given his own short and pudgy stature. She'd been a large woman, full- hipped as well as big-breasted, with the shoulders of the Scuolo-born washerwoman she'd been before Fianelli made her his concubine.
No loss. She'd been a poor cook, and Fianelli preferred to dine in public eateries anyway. Besides, it made it easier to use the kitchen for its real purpose, which was to serve as the headquarters for his various criminal enterprises.
His three enforcers were already sitting at the table, lounging back in their chairs and enjoying the bottle of grappa he'd opened for them before going down to the basement.
'All right, it's on.' He pulled out a chair and sat down himself. Zanari poured him a glass of grappa. 'I just got the word.'
None of the three enforcers asked him how he'd 'gotten the word,' or from whom. In truth, they didn't care. A large part of the reason they obeyed Fianelli, despite his unprepossessing appearance, was that they all considered him a veritable wizard when it came to knowing the right things and the right people.
