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A Key to the Illuminated Heretic [MultiFormat]
eBook by A. M. Dellamonica
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eBook Category: Alternate History Nebula Award(R) Preliminary Ballot Nominee, Sidewise Award Finalist
eBook Description: What if Joan of Arc hadn't burned?
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Alternate Generals III, ed. Harry Turtledove, 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: May 2007
147 Reader Ratings:
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [46 KB]
, ePub (EPUB) [46 KB]
, Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [31 KB]
, Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [211 KB]
, Palm Doc (PDB) [34 KB]
, Microsoft Reader (LIT) [88 KB]
, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [104 KB]
, hiebook (KML) [102 KB]
, Sony Reader (LRF) [62 KB]
, iSilo (PDB) [28 KB]
, Mobipocket (PRC) [35 KB]
, Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [63 KB]
, OEBFF Format (IMP) [50 KB]
Words: 9690
Reading time: 27-38 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
Frontispiece: Joan of Arc stands chained in a horse-drawn wagon, wearing a black gown. Leaning against a pair of nuns, she seems almost to swoon. Her right arm is portrayed as bones without flesh. The horses' ornate curls and gleaming teeth lend a ghastly note, and blackened angels border the image.
The scene is easily recognized: the Maid's debilitation, the nuns, and especially the cloud of larks above serve to identify it as Joan's journey to the trial that ended her 13-year imprisonment for heresy. It was at this "Exoneration Trial" that she encountered Dulice Aulon, the Jehanniste artist responsible for the holy pictures on which the codex illuminations are based.
"We mustn't face the King in battle." Joan had the light, clear voice of a young woman, even after her years in prison and the hard decade since her release. She'd asked one of the new archers, a girl of perhaps seventeen, to cut her hair, and a few broken strands of silver hair clung to her neck. The rest lay at her feet, bright in the glow of the dying fire.
"Not fight Charles?" Hermeland was incredulous. He was a badger of a man, with a dramatic, pointy face and remarkable speed with a sword. "We must turn his army back before it unites with the force of mercenaries coming up from Rome. If you can't see that--"
"Can't see it? Who ordered us to turn north, days before anyone knew the King had pursued us into Burgundy?"
"You--" he began, and as her brow came up he corrected, "your Voices."
They were nearly of a height, less than perfect subjects for a drawing. From her seat in the shadowed corner of the tent, Dulice tried to capture the dirt on Joan's blue tunic and leggings, her sheathed knife of a body. She was all deadly intent, a knight with a lined face and too many scars. Her eyes blazed--it was a wonder Hermeland did not flinch from the heat there!
"What I do not see is why Charles is coming at all," she said. "He's an old man. He never led men-at-arms before."
"Politics," he replied. "So says Marcel Renard."
"He would bring that filthy word into it." She waved off the archer gently, shaking out her shorn locks as the girl left.
"We can win this battle, Joan," Hermeland said.
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