Hegel’s chagrin they refused to advance over the precipices or up the streambeds he led them to. Cursing them, he screamed until lights flared up around them but their tusks and legions of legs frightened him dreadfully, dampening his enthusiasm to engage the equines in combat. Mary told him many secrets as they traveled, things that made him froth with anger and cry in despair. Her uncanny resemblance to Nicolette the witch ceased to upset him after the first day, although it kept his thoughts chaste throughout the ordeal.
Manfried once mistook the falling snow for gold and would have tumbled to his death in pursuit had Martyn not convinced him it was a diabolical trap, adder-spit dyed yellow to fool the honest. Manfried crawled under a blanket for several hours to keep the poison from his flesh. When Hegel addressed the priest as the Virgin, Manfried briefly shared his brother’s delusion before realizing her to be an imposter, the genuine Mary resting inside the wagon. The things She whispered to him were perhaps the only possible words to make a Grossbart blush. At night, when none truly slept but rolled and raved beside a fire which might have existed only in their minds, Manfried crept under the wagon and prayed until he went hoarse.
Being of the clergy Martyn had a monstrous appetite but it could not contest with that of the Grossbarts, the result being he consumed less bread and could function somewhat like a normal man. While he did not match their hunger, however, his imagination had fed on many tracts over the years and so his visions compensated in wildness what they occasionally lacked in vibrancy. For the demon-hunting holy man their travel led over mountains of ash and through clouds of sulfur, steam and venom raining upon them, the wails of the damned giving them no respite. His beloved Elise remained absent but Saint Roch harried their wagon, his moldering corpse demanding the return of his stolen finger. Martyn hurled the relic into the snow, shrieking his remorse for his own graveyard indiscretion. His speech drifted among the dialects and tongues he had learned, along with a few hybrids of his own devising. A test, he moaned to the lost souls riding beside him, a final test before the glory. Although it meant his damnation, he did not correct the fallen seraphim beside him when the radiant creature addressed him as Mary, Mother of God. He knew himself to be Mary Magdalene, and was ashamed.
Unlike natural dreams, these horrors did not vanish instantly upon their waking but tormented them day and night, subtly fading in intensity until their absence maddened the trio more than their presence had. Stopping the horses late in the third afternoon of their psychosis, Hegel stumbled down to simultaneously vomit and shit while his brother unhitched the horses for the first time in days. The miserable creatures were famished and blistered, the expression of their huge eyes launching the Brothers into another giggling fit. Martyn stayed on the bench, praying and weeping until the Grossbarts started a fire.
The next morn they realized they had left the peaks behind in favor of gentler slopes and would probably not die in the mountains after all. After again reprimanding himself and again checking on the lady who again smiled sweetly at him and batted her eyes, Manfried again readied the horses. Unlike the previous day’s gloom and silence, the Brothers and Martyn enjoyed the rough road and biting wind and gruel-turned stomachs.
Nothing could dampen their souls at the first sight of something other than the boundless succession of snowy rocks that had enclosed the Brothers for weeks. They dipped through forested valleys and over grassy meadows, and had they been the frivolous sort songs would surely have been sung; instead they talked of honor, faith, and the gift of prophecy. Had Martyn not shared the bread, he would have thought them heretics of the worst sort.
“Further proof? What further proof you need?” asked Hegel, amazed his sanctimonious brother doubted the truth.
“Could be somethin else, devilry or spells,” grumbled Manfried. The idea that his licentious hallucinations might come to pass bothered him in all sorts of ways.
“That is possible,” admitted Martyn. “The Deceiver might well have given us such visions for the express purpose of fooling us into thinking we were touched by the divine.”
“But could even he impersonate Mary so well?” demanded Hegel. “I seen Her Face and heard Her Council. Why would the Devil take