A Complete Novelet
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Thrilling Wonder Stories December 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER I
He Who Sees
Blessed or cursed, the moment of sight was coming again.
The light was stealing back into his room curtained so thickly againstthe coming dawn, stealing back, blue and ghostly from wherever thatstrange light shone. His twoscore experiences of it were not enough toquiet his trembling. Familiarity with the fringes of that strange landof the soul bred anything but contempt. He could barely hold the twoforks of the laurel rod in the tight grip of his hands. His eyes feltwide and strained, as though their lids were bereft of power to open orclose.
The mist thinned, so that figures could be seen stirring in it, firstdim shadows and then sharp silhouettes. Two horsemen faced each othersome yards apart. He caught the gleam of metal. They were armoredjousters, on chargers richly mailed and caparisoned.
Beyond them a master-at-arms sat his own mount, with a baton liftedready to signal, and still beyond him sat spectators in a gallery. Itwas a tournament of great folk.
The horseman nearest his point of view wore on his surcoat the deviceof a lion, and his tilting helmet's lowered visor gleamed like fire-newgold. The opponent wore a lion, too, but in a different heraldic pose,and his armor was less ornate. He was of gentrice, perhaps nobility,but not equal in rank with the gold-visored one. That gold visor meantroyalty.
Voices made themselves heard, barely, as if from a distance. Ladieswere cheering, and the voice of the master-at-arms rang out. He liftedhis baton. The two powerful mailed steeds sprang forward at each other,the lances of the opponents dipped their blunt points into position,the armed riders settled their shields into place. Then—
A splitting crash, as of broken timber. The less gaudy rider's tiltinglance broke on his adversary's shield and glancing upward, drove itssplintered end full into and through the golden visor. A moment laterthe stricken man spun writhing to the ground. More cries, of dismay.
The victorious rider sprang from his saddle and flung up his own visor.His young face showed dark and concerned as it bent above the fallenone. He loosened the clasps of the gilded helmet and pulled it clearof a bloody, bearded face, more mature than his, with gleaming teethclenched in pain and the eyes terribly torn away.
Then the mists were gone, and the witness sat alone in the dark,remembering who he was, and where he was, and what he had been doing.
Rising, he dropped upon his brazen tripod stool the robe of strangeembroidery with its dampened fringe. Carefully he laid on his desk theforked rod of laurel, and stepped back out of the faint fumes, acridwith strange herbs, that rose from the basin. He went to a window andpulled aside the tapestry that hid it. Dawn was gray out there, andhe would be given no more visions tonight. The sun of southern Francewould be up betimes, warm and cheerful. But he, Michel de Nostradame,physician of Provence, had meditations of the gloomiest.
What had he seen? The face of the young victor in that shadowytourney-scene was familiar to him—from another vision. Where and whenhad these things happened—or were they still to happen?
He should burn his books, he told himself. Even if scrying and spyinginto the future were lawful—and throughout France of this year of 1547it was a hanging, burning felony—he did