by J. Gibson
Garron bowed. “Aye, Your Reverencies.” The same words he had uttered in repeat throughout the inquisition, if it were such; a standard formality when addressing the Ennead. He turned and exited. With all he had endured, a reprieve from examination marked a welcome change.
A winding flight of stairs led up to his assigned space, ascending from a hallway to the side of the central vestibule, a grand entryway to a grander main hall. Torches made visible the stone passage he climbed, scattered with paintings of archbishops and others past, and narrow, stained-glass windows that filtered through colored light. Hung from the walls near the vaulted ceiling were tapestries, similar to those in the Ennead’s council room, free of wrinkles and brushed on their faces. Machines and attendant deacons maintained the Priory to near spotlessness.
When he came to his chamber, a joined bedroom and washroom, a deacon awaited outside the door and offered him a bath. “A kindness of Archbishop Mallum,” the deacon said. His first in weeks.
With care, he had lowered himself into the hot water, cloudy with oils. Eyes closed, he drew in a deep breath of the air around him, spiced by scented candles and warmed by a hearth in the sleeping quarter.
The deacon scrubbed his filthy, calloused feet and scarred back and arms with a stone of pumice, stripping away dead skin. At times, the stone grazed uncomfortably against his ribs and shoulder blades, barely encased beneath thin muscle, fat, and flesh. She scraped the dirt from under his nails and trimmed them. For all her work, he thanked her and asked her to part and enjoy her evening, wishing not to take advantage of her services. She obliged with a smile and tilt at the waist, disappearing and leaving him in solitude.
When the water had cooled and his fingertips had pruned, he removed himself from the tub and dried off using a towel sat out for him on a stool. He stepped into his sleeping space. Undercloths and robes waited to replace his former attire. These robes were different in size, custom-tailored to match his withered figure with a measure of dignity. How did they prepare this already? He had forgotten what life had been like in the capital.
He lay on the bed, a feather mattress; a foreign thing, much nicer than anything he had slept on in the south in all the ages he’d been there. The villages were not so common of higher accommodations, and the villagers were unaccustomed to them. In the richest nation on Earth, one might expect better for the lesser folk. Yet they did live decently for their troubles, in large part due to the Church. No matter what dissenting factions claim, the Church does well for its people, from the farmer to the student and machinist.
Much time had passed since his encounter. But even in this unsoiled, sanctified place, the most so of any in the world, warded with the strongest of magic, crafted by the likes of Aramanth Delacroix, Camille Sangrey, and the Archmagister and her chosen aids, he remained in a state of unease. His mind preserved a sense of perturbation, as one might feel after a candle has burned out and left them in the dark. Something that he could not seal away had uncovered itself within him.
A knock came upon his door.
“You may enter.”
The door opened, its old hinges silent and freshly-oiled. Delacroix stepped inside and closed the door behind her, walking wordlessly over to an oak chair with a wrapped leather seat and back at the side of the room. She brought it to his bedside and sat down, crossing her legs, and offered him a cordial grin, her hands folded in her lap. In her left palm, she held lunar tear beads.
“Father,” she said, her voice silken, and her words, unhurried and light. “You look better.” She had an ever-refined manner about her, whether in public or private.
Weary, he looked over at her and sat up. He would have risen to his feet, but found his strength had escaped him. She appeared to recognize his lethargy, gesturing that he could remain seated. “Archbishop Delacroix, ‘tis an honor. I expected a deacon may deliver my sentence to me.” Even his voice sounded frail.
“You are not to be reprimanded, Father. Where would be the justice in that? You had nothing for which to remain in the Vale. We have confirmed it. The village is quiet as a tomb. Martials recovered the body of Alina, and we shall bury her with proper rites. The inquiry was but a formality, for all the impressing.”
“Archbishop.” Relief rolled over him. The back of his head tingled and the weight at his chest that had staggered his breathing all day fled. “I was certain Archbishop Sangrey and the Vicar would find me guilty.” A shame persisted. “I did not abandon my station out of malice or indifference, though I failed—”
“The tragedy visited upon Erlan remains a mystery. Nevertheless, only a fool would have dared to challenge it. Archbishops Umbra and Sangrey were sympathetic to your plight, as were we each. Nothing you might have bested alone could have decimated a village with nary a trace in a single night. Our business is virtue and burden, not the needless loss of life. We do not desire you dead for dying’s sake. You are a good man. Do not question your goodness for the misfortunes visited upon you.”
To his left, a window leaked hazy yellow light through its shutters onto the surface of his bed. “What is to happen now?” He gazed down at his legs, slender shapes beneath a thick woolen blanket of black.
“We’ve received reports of other disruptions in the underlands since the massacre of Erlan. A company of the Martials will investigate and deal with any present malefactors.” She paused, extending the lunar tears she clutched to him. “You will remain here. In your own admission, a wicked force has touched your mind. We must be certain that it will plague you no longer before we permit you leave, lest you inflict it on others or cause harm to yourself.”
He took the beads from her. His hand appeared aged and rough over her delicate, youthful fingers, even more so by their emaciated state, his knuckles wide and the spaces between them shrunken. These beads were not his. His had been dull and distressed. This strand differed even from his original issue when they were new. What became of my beads? He had no recollection of informing the Ennead he had misplaced his string.
Considering their abilities, however, he need not have done so for them to be cognizant of his deprivation.
“Sleep, Garron.” Delacroix discarded formal titles. She stood and turned for the door of his bedchamber. “No harm will come to you, so long as I am in this city.” With that, she left.
His worry did not dissipate with her words, but he calmed. Much remained elusive to him, and to them. What took place in the south, and how many people may be dying as he rested in his gentle feather bed?
He lay down again. His eyelids were heavy and fluttered to a close. The warmth of his room and the sustenance afforded him since he first arrived had somewhat restored him after the tribulations of his journey, but he felt lesser now. Unsettled, sluggish. His thoughts remained unclear and aggrieved, no matter the comforting words or space. The bodies haunted him, Alina’s and Emmelina’s distorted, curdled features, as did the timbre of that invasive voice. He would never be as he were.
He did not know whether he could go on.
CHAPTER V: MANEUVERS
Athenne
“So, the Ennead still conspires to murder us.” Bhathric paced the room, having arrived moments prior with Eclih in tow. She wore a dark midriff coat over a fitted tunic, grey trousers, and well-kept leather boots. On occasion, she rolled a lock of black hair between her fingers. “They must be aware of our movements.”
Uldyr shivered, his body glazed in a thin layer of sweat. Athenne dabbed at his wounds with an ointment. She lacked the knowledge of healing to treat his worst injuries. Her hand rested on his shoulder when she finished applying the medicine, and the other wiped at his brow with a wet cloth, sweeping away dried blood. The light of the sun and candles illuminated the common area of his home.
“Aliester Haldis, the Red, he called himself. Probably Forgebrand. Abbisan dancer. Never met him that I remember,” Uldyr said in an enervated tone. “We can’t assume the Ennead were his employer just because they work with daggerhands. Could be any
number out to stop us. Perhaps it’s someone after me, alone.”
“Nevertheless.” Eclih balanced on his heels against a wooden support beam, arms folded at his chest. “We must be vigilant. Someone knows something. They targeted Uldyr because of it. You’ve been with the Saints for some time, working, traveling.” He looked at Uldyr. “If they want you, they want us.”
Athenne adjusted in her seat, as if to remind them of her presence before she spoke. She hated interrupting. “The daggerhand claimed he wasn’t after me, yet I’ve been with you for months. Would they not desire us dead, alike, if it were their aim to strike down the Saints?”
“You were with Uldyr,” Bhathric corrected. “Mayhap their client doesn’t know of you.”
Eclih rested the index and middle fingers of his right hand against his lips, his expression pensive, eyes staring to the floor. “Aye,” he said at last. He stepped away from the beam and slipped his hands into the pockets of his breeches. “We best assume they watch us, but not always. Often enough to be of concern, but not to distract us.”
“Should we not return to Aitrix and inform her?” Athenne’s hand lingered on Uldyr’s shoulder. “Is she not in danger?” His tremors remained, and a fever swelled beneath the flesh.
Did a taint from the blade infect his wound?
“She can handle herself.” Uldyr inhaled sharply and shifted with strained effort on his cot. Dark blood crusted and dampened the bandages over the injuries Athenne had treated earlier. She had failed to stanch the bleeding. “Even with the Ennead’s restriction of the Aether, her gifts exceed anyone’s capacity to contain them. Forgebrand’s best couldn’t harm her.”
He is not well. Labored breathing, skin flushed, words ragged.
Bhathric stopped by the window, gazing out toward the front garden, to the body of the mercenary lying motionless in the grass and weeds. “This one’s dead, anyway. We can’t afford to lose the time for him. I’m certain Aitrix would instruct us to push forward.”
Uldyr could die. Abbisan dancers and mercenaries each coated their blades in toxins, including feces and exotic poisons and venoms harvested from plants and animals. A festering infection caused by such weapons would make for a slow and gruesome death. If the daggerhand had befouled his edges, Uldyr’s wounds would refuse to mend. He would fade with each hour and day, if he had days.
Athenne’s hands tingled with a jittery unease. A heavy fluttering gripped her chest. Before they had even carried out their deed, peril lurked, nipped at their heels.
Will someone accost us again?
She ran fingers through her hair to brush it away from her eyes and braced her chin on her palm with her elbow on one knee. The others talked among themselves while she reflected. What if Uldyr had perished in that fight? If he had died, so would have I. Could a mercenary have afforded to spare her? Why would the Mother save you, lend you special favor? She played a dangerous game in this quest to free the Aether with neither a clear path to victory nor any idea of what true success would be.
Her companions discussed their plans. At their gathering, Aitrix had told them of her belief that the constraints on the Aether were a product of a particular warding magic, likely crafted by Archbishop Aramanth Delacroix and the magisters of the Church. Delacroix, revered as one of the most brilliant living mages in all of Imios, rivaled the legendary Aetherian scholarship of the Archmage Besogos himself. Though many thought the ability to access the Aether to be innate, and unpredictably bequeathed beyond calculated means of power and essence, the learning of incantations required extensive study and instruction, at which Delacroix had excelled. She could perform spells so intricate that but a few mages on Earth comprehended them. Fewer had the ability to cast them.
Delacroix’s academic knowledge shadowed Aitrix’s like a mountain over a hill, but fear of the latter stemmed from her raw power, the deep well of her magical essence. Where the apparent wards limited most in Imperial territory to rudimentary craft, or bereft of magic, Aitrix remained able to execute even higher combative spells. As Uldyr had stated, few could challenge Aitrix Kravae, let alone trounce her.
Before their departure, Aitrix and Eclih had performed a scrying incantation, the former lending power to the latter, dubbed a wizard in the overlands for his unique ability to scry at an exceptional distance. Together, the two of them had uncovered that a central ward restricted the Aether from a chamber deep beneath the Grand Priory in Aros, by virtue of the fact that the space had resisted their scrying most. They further unveiled that boundary wards carried this central ward’s restrictive effect to the edges of the Empire’s territories.
It would be the duty of Athenne’s cohort to make their way into the Grand Priory and disable the source ward. Once they destroyed this ward and liberated the Aether, other agents of the Saints were to disable the boundary wards that might harbor remnants of the spell, too dangerous to attempt while the main ward that powered them still lived. Infiltrating the Priory would be the chief hurdle to surmount.
Aitrix had further tasked Eclih and Bhathric with scheming the second phase of their assault: the annihilation of the Iron Court at the center of the Imperial Palace, home of the Imperial Sovereign.
Athenne found her greatest reservations in this facet of their mission. She had worked to make peace with the fact that attacking the Grand Priory would require the slaughter of innocent members of the Church. But to destroy the most hallowed space in the world, to obliterate a place where Ankhev the White, the highest celestial servant of Gohheia, once stood? The notion filled her with unrelenting dread.
Could salvation in death still be hers after this? Is this wrong? Had the Church wandered astray? Is it the Mother, Herself, against whom we wage war? That would surely resign her to an eternity of anguish in Eophianon.
Eclih and Bhathric continued to deliberate, their words a droning noise in the background. Athenne looked at Uldyr as if they sat alone in the room, drifting between the physical space around her and her thoughts. He rested, sickly, enfeebled, his eyes shut. She had never observed him so. He had always been a towering figure, hard as iron, tough as steel. She could scarcely stand it one moment, but in the next, a numbness seized her. Her cerulean eyes peered without aim, empty, seeing without watching.
As she wandered in her mental haze, a passage from the Blest Writ, that sacred Matrian text, came to her:
The All-Mother rewards in death those who live by the three pillars—altruism, order, and progress—with eternal rest in Nihil, the Nothing. Those among the wicked who defy the Mother’s will and want must remain for all time in Eophianon, the Blackened Yonder, home of Korvaras, Patron of the Undead. There, condemned spirits relive their worldly torments, up to their deaths, in a ceaseless cycle.
Most accepted this perspective on the afterlife, including Athenne, who had grown up with and learned it as the Truth, but there were exceptions. Asdamosian cultists believed that the spirits of the dead passed through the Asdamos Rift and entered into his realm, the Abyss, to become a share of the Aether. Some druids of Sitix held that mortals perished and converted into a part of the living Earth; the energy in the storms, the nutrition of animals and plants, the power behind the winds. Worshipers of Korvaras contended that they would become as Acolytes in his plane, the land of the unforgiven, after death.
What should I believe? The damned whispered no secrets, and those put to rest in Nihil took a final vow of silence. Would remaining a part of this enterprise confine her to a meaningless, perpetual horror? Perhaps the late hour had passed, and had always been so since the days of her youth, and her sordid mistake.
That terrible error, so long ago, in the time of her young life, ever at her mind’s periphery. When she had climbed the rocks of the riverbanks across the Renerin Hinterlands. When she had scaled the trees and watched from above, longing to glimpse a hessant in the northern woodlands, beyond the Eastern Mountains.
Those gorgeous creatures, half like a deer fawn and half like a mortal. Too beautiful for s
uch an unpleasant world. Hunters pursued them for their hides, the thick coats around their hips, though rarely captured or killed them. Natural healers and limited psychics, the stories claimed, hessants exceeded the abilities of the most powerful human and elven materialists and mentalists.
Athenne’s youthful folly had caused her such strife, turmoil, self-doubt. She couldn’t talk of it. Fear, anger, and guilt gripped her and prevented her from thinking deeply of it. In the aftermath of her misdeed, she had run and wept, then sat at the edge of a stream, arms wrapped around bent legs, face buried in her knees; afraid to move or go home, scared that wickedness had etched itself on her face, visible in her gaze through the pinholes of her pupils.
Finally, after all her waiting and watching and hoping, a hessant had come to her, less common in the Hinterlands than the Hessantwood. A fonna, as natural philosophers called their females. It stood against the frosted backdrop, glowing, fur sparkling with tiny beads of ice. Its large, unblinking eyes affixed on her.
Hessants were intelligent and verbal. Athenne yearned for her to speak, to hear what so few had. Yet the fonna said nothing, and vanished into the forest. The fonna knew, saw into her mind and through her.
Athenne had felt unworthy since. Meandering and lowly, without purpose. Ages had passed, and that pain, once constant and piercing, persisted as a dull, smothering ache.
Bhathric interrupted her ruminations, tortuous and glum. “Athenne, are you up to it?”
“Hm?” Athenne replied, jolted back to the present.
“Lost in her mind.” A tone of concern underlaid Eclih’s jest.
Well lost, indeed. She felt isolated, even surrounded by friends, if they were such.
Co-conspirators.
Fellow malefactors.
Soon-to-be-murderers.
Bhathric’s eyes crinkled with a sympathetic, deliberate half-grin. “Aitrix has asked us to task you with getting to the source ward in the Grand Priory. It’s our duty to accompany you to the Imperial City to aid in secondary endeavors.” She paused, as if gauging Athenne’s reaction. “Are you up to it?”
