The Book of Seven Hands: A Foreworld SideQuest (The Foreworld Saga) Read online

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2013 Foreworld, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North

  PO Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  E-ISBN: 9781477855805

  CONTENTS

  JULY 5, 1524

  JULY 13, 1524

  JULY 14, 1524

  JULY 16, 1524

  JULY 26, 1524

  JULY 27, 1524

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  List of Foreworld Saga Titles

  JULY 5, 1524

  VALENCIA, SPAIN

  The recorder, Gonzalos, took each of the dead man’s words and set them on the parchment, willing his hand not to shake in the sudden silence.

  “Read the testimony, recorder.”

  Gonzalos heaved a ragged breath. Then he lifted the document to his mouth and blew on it, drying the dead man’s last words. “Thus the testimony of Don Manuel Sifuentes begins. ‘Navarre will be the place where the sorcerer meets us,’” he read. “‘I’m telling you beyond all doubt that it will be outside Navarre. The Basque region. Vacanana. Cataluña. The Extremadura. In a small village in Provence, and in the Italian peninsula. It will be in Bologna. It will be in London, I swear to you. Zurich will be a point of reconnaissance and, eventually, a meeting place, drawing scholars from all over Europe, and that you must believe. The Maldives. Corsairs will harbor our companions. Brandenburg. Sevilla. Madhouse. Madhouse. I will go and await my Duchess on the other side. May the Virgin of Promachos greet me there.’”

  Gonzalos cleaned the nib on a rag. The inquisition chamber was silent. He glanced through the lone black doorway, into the mausoleum, where the holiest and bravest of Valencia had been buried for eons. He studied the two white-marble angels guarding the stairway up into the basilica. Their permanence felt like peace to him.

  Father Sanandrés came over to the dead man, looking down at him kindly, as though he had just tucked him into bed. Even in death, this Manuel is a magnificent specimen, Gonzalos thought, tilting his head to look at the prostrate lion of a man. Sixty or so, he guessed, with silvered, wiry hair upon his sculpted chest and in the matted beard of his pubic hair. He was far larger and more handsome than his two inquisitors, with a terrible scar in the center of his chest from a wound that would have killed a lesser man, Gonzalos imagined.

  “After all that. What an absurd waste,” muttered Sanandrés, stepping backward from the corpse. He looked at Gonzalos, who pursed his lips ever so slightly in agreement, pointed chin beard bobbing.

  “Oh, I disagree. We’ve learned much. Read it again,” said the lead inquisitor, Father Agustín Zacarías. He’d set his elbows upon the desk. With the bowl of bright, sweet lemons before him, he looked like a man contemplating breakfast, not the last words of a dead man.

  Gonzalos and Sanandrés had begun reciting a rosary for comfort. They did not stop, but each looked at the old inquisitor as they prayed.

  Zacarías interrupted them. “Please read it again, I said.” He had bowed his forehead against his fingertips in concentration. His eyes were shut tight. “I can almost see it. Read, now.”

  Gonzalos was not an official notary, but he had been assigned to this morning’s work by Zacarías. Gonzalos was just a year into his duties in the Valencia Inquisición. Zacarías was even newer, but his seniority documents and bona fides came from on high, the Vatican, so Gonzalos was eager to find his favor. Picking up the parchment, Gonzalos read the last statement once more. He was made nervous by the anger vibrating from the exacting and steadfast Father Sanandrés, a powerful inquisitor here in Valencia. Sanandrés began to pace and breathe heavily in distress, sweeping off his filthy leather smock and sighing in fury as Gonzalos read.

  When Father Zacarías produced a small dark roll in his fingers, Gonzalos stopped reading midsentence. He watched the old man light the tiny roll off a gleaming brass oil lamp and take a puff from one end. Gonzalos had heard of cojibas from sailors returning from the islands of New Spain. But he had never seen tobacco used before. In the hallowed darkness of La Inquisición’s windowless chamber, the smoke of it smelled exotic, imperial.

  “How did a priest in Valencia come by a cojiba roll?” Sanandrés said in wonder.

  “Never mind. Continue,” Zacarías said.

  “No, don’t, Gonzalos,” Sanandrés interrupted. “There’s no need.”

  Smoke spooled from Zacarías’s mouth as if he were a mythical smoke-breathing beast. “Gather yourself, Sanandrés.”

  “That testimony is useless. You know that.”

  “Quite incorrect,” Zacarías said evenly. He was so calm that Gonzalos could scarcely believe the Father Inquisitor had been screaming in anger just a few moments ago. “This testimony tells me exactly what I need to know.”

  Wincing from the tobacco smoke drifting toward him from Zacarías’s burning roll, Sanandrés said bitterly, “None of these words matter because words spoken under this level of duress are meaningless.”

  Zacarías reached out his hand and snapped his wrinkled fingers at Gonzalos, then gestured for Gonzalos to hand him the parchment. Zacarías read it silently, one hand upon his desk, Vatican signet ring on display (for Sanandrés’s benefit, no doubt), with the roll held between his fingers like a delicate quill. “The dilemma facing a man of substance who must conceal something is not how to resist speaking but how to create a fog around the truth. The man you just tortured, Sanandrés, is a brilliant fellow, capable of the greatest subterfuge, but he must speak truth eventually, for that is the man he is.” Zacarías paused, flashed his perfect white teeth at Sanandrés in a smile, then raised Gonzalos’s document and said, “Listen, when Manuel Sifuentes said, ‘Navarre. The Basque region. Vacanana in Cataluña,’ he was narrowing in. See that? He could not help himself. He is a logical thinker, and he is crossing a map in his delirium, here. To Vacanana he went. Then he caught himself. He pulled back. ‘The Extremadura. In a small village in Provence.’ He is running away now, to the Italian peninsula. To Bologna. Then he sails into absurdity, into the pain you were giving him. ‘London.’ We know that Sifuentes planned to hold a meeting in the next fortnight with a foreigner he called ‘the sorcerer.’ Sifuentes could not have reached London in that time. Bologna? Zurich? Simply nonsense from this point on.”

  “Vacanana.” Sanandrés was seemingly torn between his apprehension and his curiosity about the lead inquisitor’s deduction. “In Cataluña. You’re probably right. The book will be brought there. But how do you know about this meeting?”

  “Please transcribe what I am about to say into the private record of this Inquisición, Brother Gonzalos.” Zacarías waited for Gonzalos to set a fresh page of parchment before him. He gave the traditional introduction of the date, his name, and his rank, and then said, “I believe this ‘sorcerer’ is an astrologer, a student of mysticism that Manuel Sifuentes met during his campaign in Italy. Many scholars come to Cataluña from all over Europe to learn from the last true Cabalists there. Filthy Jewish marannos. Please, strike that last. Very good. Continue. Sifuentes intended to meet with one of these foreign scholars in order to translate the ancient book that he stole.”

  “Manuel Sifuentes stole the book? And how do yo
u know that?” Sanandrés was rubbing his muscular shoulder, which was probably quite sore from hoisting the prisoner by rope, Gonzalos imagined.

  “Very well. Strike that,” Zacarías said to Gonzalos, annoyed. “Say, ‘A tome that came into his possession.’ No, strike that. Say that he ‘apparently owns this notorious Book of the Seven Hands.’”

  Gonzalos nodded. “‘Don Manuel Sifuentes wished to translate the notorious Book of the Seven Hands, which he apparently owns.’”

  “I am in your debt.”

  “But where did that information come from?” Sanandrés said. “About the book. About the meeting with the foreigner. And astrologer? That didn’t come from this testimony.”

  “You must listen more carefully, Father. Our man was eager to part with information today,” Zacarías said. Then he continued transcribing. “We also know that the two students who have long done his bidding are traveling to meet their dearly departed master in Cataluña. One of them is Alejo Lope, the famous Algerian hostage who acquired the book for his teacher. Alejo is a red-haired fellow, bearded, powerfully built, with astonishing agility, perhaps traveling with gitanos, whom he loves. I have also deduced—”

  “Deduced?” Sanandrés asked.

  Zacarías ignored him. “Continue, Gonzalos. Alejo Lope is a swordsman, but not the equal of the other, a slight, handsome rake with jet-black hair and a thin mustache. That man can defeat a score of enemies in a skirmish as easily as if he were slicing bread for supper.” Zacarías’s watery blue eyes sparked with malice. “He is the legend known as the Great Basilio, whom Sifuentes here dearly loved.”

  “Sifuentes never said any—”

  “I recommend that La Inquisición of Valencia and La Inquisición of Cataluña collaborate to capture these two confederates of the criminal—”

  “Stop.” Sanandrés said, pointing at Gonzalos’s parchment.

  Gonzalos lifted his quill but kept his head down, bowed over the parchment.

  Sanandrés turned, looking ready to pounce on Zacarías. “You’re reading hearsay into the record.”

  Zacarías smoked his cojiba roll for a long quiet moment in which the three of them listened to the angelic sound of a choir that had begun practicing overhead in the cathedral. “I assure you I am not.”

  “Who is this Manuel Sifuentes?”

  Zacarías said, “You’ve never heard the stories about him, the Knight of a Thousand Enemies?”

  Sanandrés seemed to hear something strange in the older inquisitor’s voice that made him fold his arms and lean forward. “Go on.”

  “A mercenary. A murderer. A thief.” Zacarías pinched the cojiba roll with two fingers until it no longer smoldered, his ring shining dully in the oil-lamp light. Then he slipped the stub into a pocket beneath his robe. “You tortured him at the request of the Vatican itself, and you did well, I will report.”

  Sweat began to bead upon the brow of Sanandrés. “You’re lying,” he whispered in realization.

  Zacarías’s upper lip curled like a wolf’s. “What did you say to me?”

  Perspiring freely now, Sanandrés listened to the far-off, ethereal singing, his jaw set and his eyes darting wildly, as if he were about to answer the choir’s music with a cry of anguish. “Why should a thief matter to the Vatican?” he said.

  Gonzalos watched as Zacarías stammered for a moment then clamped his lips tight in a line of indignation.

  Sanandrés waited. Gonzalos knew this pause. Sanandrés was skilled at using silence. He knew its effect on those who might be inclined to speak.

  The two inquisitors glared at each other.

  The oil lamp’s flames hissed at the dark.

  “These men stole the notorious Book of the Seven Hands in order to revive an anti-Papist cult,” Zacarías said. “The Vatican wants the book recovered and the cult stamped out.”

  “He said he knew your face.”

  Zacarías blinked rapidly, and his seamed, wrinkled lips pursed.

  “I think I tortured Manuel Sifuentes because you wanted revenge upon him.”

  “The Vatican issued the Papal Bull, not I.” Zacarías spat out the words. Before he could stop himself, he added, “They came to me.” The old priest’s face contorted in a slight moue of self-loathing, and then he swallowed before fixing on Sanandrés with hard, grave eyes.

  “In that case, the Vatican came to you because Don Manuel wronged you,” Sanandrés deduced.

  Zacarías patted his pocket where he had put the tobacco roll, then folded his fidgeting hands.

  Sanandrés’s face was drenched with sweat as he bowed his head, damp black hair hanging in his eyes. “I killed this man. You didn’t even extract the information you wanted from him.”

  Zacarías cleared his throat. “On the contrary. The information I confirmed today about Basilio has been sought after for decades, Sanandrés.”

  “Bah. You liar. Manuel never even uttered the name Basilio,” growled Sanandrés, wiping his wet face against his shoulder. “You’re grasping now that you’ve been found out.”

  “No, Sifuentes confirmed my suspicions when he spoke the name Constanza. Remember that? The woman who spurned Manuel Sifuentes at the altar? Recorder, read back that part. The part when I asked about the Duchess’s death.”

  “You’re a mad viper,” Sanandrés said.

  “I’m rooting out a viper! A nest of them! I am on the verge of gathering crucial information about the Duchess Constanza from her father in León,” Zacarías said, hot and self-righteous. He shoved his chair back from the desk. “When I have it, I’ll send it to the archbishop in Barcelona, for he has a long-standing case of inquiry about that murderer Basilio.”

  “This is insane. We did nothing but hammer Sifuentes for the last hour about the location of the book! About where he’ll meet the ‘sorcerer’ who will translate it. Now all you want to talk about is Duchess Constanza and the Great Basilio?” Sanandrés said, mocking the old inquisitor. “What does any of this have to do with the book you’re after?”

  Zacharias squared the corner of the parchment with the corner of his desk. The gesture was gentle, but the air around the old inquisitor chilled with menace. “Basilio can resurrect this cult of Sifuentes’s. I must locate the book before Basilio does, and if I cannot, I must destroy him.”

  “God be with you in that,” Sanandrés said. His voice became animal-like, hounding. “Did you even see that Sifuentes was descending into death, where that secret you crave would reside with him forever? Did you see it when I lifted him? When I watered him? No. You don’t even see it now. Well, let me be the one to tell you. Sifuentes beat you. Broke you.”

  Zacarías aimed his body at Sanandrés again. “You are a skilled inquisitor. But I am not broken, and you know nothing of the great care I took in questioning Sifuentes.”

  “It’s astonishing that you hold any station of rank in La Inquisición, let alone the Holy See. Who are you, Zacarías? Why would a priest from Valencia carry a cojiba roll? You’re no priest but a nobleman, I swear. Who are you really?”

  Zacarías’s eyes widened in fury.

  “Ha. I’m right. I can see what an old joke you are,” Sanandrés shouted with a mocking, mad laugh in his voice. “A nobleman with an old grudge against a dashing knight who—”

  Gonzalos heard a gasp, and it took him a moment to realize it had escaped from his own lips.

  Gonzalos had seen a wolf attack a man once. The animal had leapt upon a farmer, ripping the fellow’s hand right from his arm. But never had Gonzalos seen a human being move with the terrible swiftness of Father Zacarías as the old priest burst from his chair with an espada corta, the kind of slim sword a street brawler would use, slashing Sanandrés across the throat before he could raise his hands to defend himself or call out for help. Sanandrés fell backward, then turned over onto his side next to Manuel Sifuentes, curling his arms and body around the crimson wound in his throat.

  Zacarías produced a handkerchief and wiped his brow. He made to wipe the bl
ade, then stopped himself and turned to the scribe.

  Gonzalos was gripping the table so hard his hands hurt. Eyes bugging forward, he stared at Father Zacarías, in fear for his own life. All he had to defend himself with was his quill.

  “This turn of events means that I need to write my own inquisitor’s report, and I’ll need your signature upon it,” Zacarías said, glaring at Gonzalos and tightening his grip on the espada. “You will never speak of this as long as you live, which might be a matter of moments or a very long time. It’s your choice.”

  Gonzalos heard the threat in the old priest’s voice and nodded against his will. The Valencia Inquisición’s chamber throbbed with the drum of his own pulse. He felt as though his world were upended and draining as Father Zacarías knelt, cut the wire cordeles from Manuel Sifuentes’s thick wrists and fit the sword in Sifuentes’s left hand. He left the cordeles around the dead man’s ankles.

  “Do you understand what happened here?” he asked, looking up at Gonzalos.

  There was no breath to push forward his voice, so Gonzalos cleared his throat and tried again. “The prisoner attacked and killed Father Sanandrés?”

  “By the grace of God, I killed the prisoner before he could cut his ankle bonds.” Zacarías stood slowly in what was either old age or an imitation of it—Gonzalos couldn’t be sure. “I shall miss that sword. Oh, and I meant to say, congratulations, Brother Gonzalos.”

  Gonzalos blinked at Zacarías from behind the scribe’s desk.

  “You are now employed by the Vatican’s Inquisición.”

  JULY 13, 1524

  IN THE DESERT OF THE PALMS

  OUTSIDE VALENCIA, SPAIN

  Hot desert wind whipped the rider’s cape wildly. Speed was of the essence, but his black-and-white draft horse was climbing a hill face that had never been climbed by a horse before.

  With the ancient Padrona huffing and foaming, Alejo stood in the stirrups as if to lift the old draft horse up the rocky hill face, threatening to beat her, make sausages out of her, cook her, feed her to the children of Italians if she didn’t climb faster.