by J. Gibson
Aitrix led their direction and path, allowing them no other way. They found themselves retaking their former route, in a more linear journey than the circuitous directions they had pursued in their return south. The sun seemed brighter with Aitrix at their side. For that, Athenne felt grateful.
Other Saints she did not know, whom no one had introduced, plodded on at the tail of their small host, swaddled in silence. They were to diverge from the main party later, but with the same destination and secondary objectives in Aros. Aitrix believed that a group larger than five would draw too much attention, particularly with her involved, and their noteworthy arms. Athenne agreed.
Uldyr had withdrawn like a turtle in its shell since their arrival at the Keep and subsequent departure. She ruminated over the time they had spent together before this, when she had walked as a Saint in name but not in practice, and had heard of Aitrix but never known her in the flesh.
Does he long for that time as I do?
They had shared a happiness, in budding acquaintance and friend love. Love, it had been, and remained. She had never told him of her love. With so many words, she had, but never in those, and never had he spoken the same. Yet she had felt it, and gleaned it from his grey gaze and the nuances of his expressions and voice.
Perhaps she would say it, sometime before they died.
CHAPTER XVI: PARTING
Garron
The flames of the hearth wilted, the cinders smoldering, the ashes falling into decay. A crackle flared and shot up a burst of sparks like the innards of a machine, whirring and grinding metal on metal. Fragranced wood, imported from the Grove to the east, scented the slender tendrils of smoke rising into the fire shaft.
In the council chamber, aglow with flamelight, a silence had overtaken like the seal of a crypt. Such a quiet that they could hear the low hum of a machine as it glided over the rough stone ground down the corridor. Some gazed at the floor, some at the fire, some to the windows and the night sky. The members of the Ennead were there, and the Grand Provost, leader of the Silver Knights, and the Imperial Sovereign. Garron presented as one of the lowest ranking individuals among them. He had become a fixture at these high meetings.
At the edge of the space, he sat in his usual chair beneath a draped Imperial flag. He wore his traditional priest’s robes, grey and black, with lunar tears at his wrist. The room cooled and overheated him at once, hot at his front and chilled at his back. As the hearth died out, the atmosphere remained intense and scorching. If he had moved a fraction nearer to the others around him, he feared his garb would singe.
The Grand Provost, Thalla Aenor, moved from her place against the council table to the well. One hand relaxed at her side, the other hung on the pommel of her longsword. She stood as one of the best fighters in the world, trained in the arts and styles of the four nations of Imios. This day, she wore her shimmering plate armor, far more ornate than the standard issue of lesser paladins, no doubt forged specially for her by the most skilled metallurgists in Aros. Brown hair and brown skin, markers of Abbisan descent, peeked through her ceremonial helm.
“Weeks, it has been. Our knight lieutenant and two companies have not returned. This is no longer a matter of minimal response.” Aenor focused on Archbishop Umbra, the Imperial Sovereign, the rest of the Ennead. “Emperor, members of the Ennead, I need not tell you. Silver Knights perish. Servants of the Clergy die. Innocents of the common body disappear in droves, as smoke from that hearth into the air. We must act. Do more.”
“I am in accord,” called the Emperor, Helies Kallata IV, from across the room. Garron had scarcely seen the Emperor before this day. A man near forty-yeared, with blue eyes, dark hair, and a pale but otherwise unremarkable face. Helies IV, like the Imperial Sovereigns preceding him, owed his position entirely to the Ennead. “Discontent grows. If left untreated, it festers. We stand at the precipice of rebellion.”
“Time and events are against us.” Archbishop Zaria Tornaeu’s green eyes were like small looking glasses reflecting the light of the fires in the dim room, housed in dark sockets and framed by dyed auburn hair. Her analyzing visage lingered on the rest for a few seconds. “Many fear for their safety in this city. Rumors of the tortures of Father Garron Latimer”—she looked to him—“have leaked into common imagination.” The high and low knew Tornaeu as a woman of the people, spending much of her time among the common body beyond the walls of the Priory. “They lie in their beds and eat their meals in terror of a threat we have hidden from and kept our tongues on. By the mercy of the All-Mother, the Undeath has not yet beset Aros. I say to you, it will not last. This malady shall soon pass the Black Canal. When it does, we’ll be at peril’s gate.”
“We ought to send a full regiment,” Archbishop Mortem suggested. “I’ll attend the venture, if need be.”
Tornaeu concurred. “I second this proposal, and I shall accompany. We must move if we expect to overcome this.”
“Have you any objections?” the Emperor asked of the Grand Provost.
She strummed the hilt of her blade. “This is reasonable. Knight Captain Bashek shall join the host.” She paused, as if to think. “If you come upon the body of the knight lieutenant or any others, please recover them, as you are able.”
The meeting adjourned for later planning and preparation. Garron would not be in the field, so he disengaged, until the arrangements became a garbled noise in the background.
For weeks, terrors had plagued him in waking and in sleep. He had existed so long in a fog of pain and fatigue that subsumed all his other emotions, until the Ennead and their powerful artistry freed him from his burden. His first instinct since the warding ritual had been to pray.
Crying, screaming, cursing the Mother, he had tried these, and regretted them. Prayer was all that it took. The Mother did not torment him. Their god endured, ever-impressive. Grace, strength, power, She bore these, and more. To curse his loving god would have been cruel, and no matter the Beast’s abuses, he would not be cruel.
Tried not to be cruel.
But you have been.
No matter what he was, or was not, he had inflicted cruelties on another. The woman’s eyes that night, like a deer’s as a wolf moves in for the killing strike. He saw the woman more than he thought of Erlan. Where warding had swept the Beast’s empty stare away, the panic of the woman’s gaze did not abate.
The memory of his crime had become as much a part of his person as heat to flame.
“Father,” said a voice at his back. “Garron.”
Sister Amun Halleck. He had hoped to see her this morning.
A modest smile broke across his face. “Amun.”
“How are you feeling?”
Everyone expressed curiosity these weeks.
“I’m well.” They had little time before the events of the day were to proceed. He looked around. “Are you familiar with a magister who wears black robes and a mask of plagues?”
“That’s unusual garb. I am not. Why do you ask?”
Amun had eyes for everything and everyone. He detected no nefarious intent in her, but inquisitiveness. This will set her on him. “He came to me with a prognosis of sorts.”
“A prognosis?”
“He believes that I am touched by death.” Garron would not mince words, for if it were so, he had information which he needed to convey. “That I am not to recover.”
“He could not know it.”
“The Ennead’s warding has deflected my external torment, but my trouble festers beneath the surface.”
“Garron.” Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
Before he replied, bells rang, a medley of iron on iron from afar. They knew what it represented.
Deacons poured out from the residence halls at the far end of the garden. All those within the Priory and much of the rest of the Imperial City would soon assemble at the public square, before the statues of Aros the First Woman and Ankhev the White, which threatened to touch the sky. Excited voices would drone like buzzi
ng wasps.
He and Amun followed the throng.
“Trust in Gohheia.” A material spell of projection amplified the Vicar’s commanding speech. Upon the square’s elevated stage stood Umbra, Sangrey, Aramanth, and a number of inquisitors. Behind them, gallows decorated with two nooses. At the end of these ropes, the Mythos reapers, Kocia Arellano of Abbisad, and Valhrenna Thrall of Xarakas.
“Trust not in the conceits of the self, but in our blessed All-Mother. If these who come before us had done so, they might have lived as you shall live the morrow. They have subsisted in abomination. This day, they die to make amends. For what little they can, those who turn from the Blest Writ of the All-Mother to stand in the fond sight of the wayward gods shall meet the same fate a thousand times, and more. May the Mother be merciful and gentle as they take their leave of this world.” He raised a hand as his piercing gaze scanned the crowd.
Archbishop Umbra indicated to the Abbisan first, who stood with no betrayal of fear upon her face. “Have you any last words? Speak them shortly, and we shall pray for you.”
She looked at the Vicar and smiled. “Good people are always so sure they’re right.”
The Xarakan to her left did not fare as well.
Her arms and chin quivered, eyes fixed on the dreary sky.
Garron and Amun moved nearer to the front of the crowd, wading through the people who had converged by the hundreds around the platform which played host to the day’s spectacle.
“And you?” the Vicar requested of the Xarakan.
Her bloodshot gaze fluttered toward him, then down to the rabble. “I—” Her voice trembled. Could she manage the words? “I die this day for a difference of belief. Seventeen-yeared, you have stolen my life. Each of you who stands and watches and says and does nothing murders me.” The girl pursed her lips as her face quaked harder, her breathing staggered. Shortly, her focus realigned upward. “Get on with it.”
The Vicar continued, unfazed. “Let this deed serve as a warning to all those who would kneel in reverence of the heathen gods, who would participate in malevolent ventures against the children of Gohheia and Her sacred kingdom: you cannot escape the Mother’s justice, for we are Her arm, and our reach is boundless.”
With a gesture to the executioner by Umbra, the women dropped, and the slack of their nooses snapped taut. The vision felt surreal, the air thick and harsh. As they sputtered and clawed at their throats, their limbs twitching and thrashing, the hanging became a festivity. Garron peered around him, at the clamor, the cheers, the commotion, enthralled faces, mesmerized and writhing in vicious waves of foul elation. He could stomach no more.
He placed a hand on Amun’s shoulder. “Let’s be off.”
She looked entranced, but in a different manner, and did not hesitate to accept his proposal. They departed the assembly without a second glance.
Garron wished to visit a house of the dying with her, as they had discussed. A number of blocks from the square, they came upon one. Only those with lunar tears could enter without explicit permission, for wards restricted the houses as a measure of quarantine and to preserve the safety of resident deacons and patients. A deacon of the third-degree greeted them with an address by titles on their way in.
“Sister Halleck has never visited a house,” he explained.
“Very well,” said the resident deacon. “Proceed with care and keep a wise distance.”
Garron offered a bow. “Thank you.”
On the outside, the house appeared warm and modest. Rock and wood in large and small blocks and beams comprised the building’s exterior. Within, polished stone made up the walls, floors, and ceiling. Marble columns supported an upper section, and hanging lamps lit the ground level. Signs meant to remind caregivers of their duties and colorful mosaics of religious scenes ornamented the space, simple but elegant.
As they walked through the antechamber of the building into the lower care floor, Amun’s eyes seemed to meet everything with curiosity and sympathy. He wanted to speak to her of particular subjects while he had this opportunity, matters which drove deeper than flesh, to ills of the mind.
“Unlike these, there are those whose frailty is a sham. They come for grief and pity, use of our charity and disabuse us of our compassion, in time.” He slowed his walking. “We mustn’t let them, however. They suffer another malady, less observed, less known, a disease of the mind which the brightest of healers struggle to understand, or outright deny.” He gave her a somber look, but with a hint of geniality. “I am so afflicted, beyond external influence. Scholars of our internal processes shall strive to the end of our days for comprehension of this sickness. We are complex by Her design beyond our wildest inklings.”
Amun admired the room. In this house of the dying, so many harbored varied illnesses, from babes to the eldest. They passed by a woman who clutched at her chest; pallid, frail, perspiring, white at the lips save dry bits of blood, pink around the eyes. Her brown gaze fixed to the ceiling between rattling, wheezing coughing fits, as if disinterested with her fate. She seemed accepting, ready to transcend her human vessel.
“Consumption, the healers call it,” Garron said to Amun, who had stopped at the end of the woman’s bed. “They believe it spreads between us, borne in the air. The sick suffer pain of the chest, gradual emaciation, fatigue, fever, night sweats, the coughing of blood. No remedy as of yet, neither by conventional medicine nor through materialism, but the best minds in the world work at it.”
“Dreadful, Father. We can do so little.”
“For the incurable, we aid in different manners. We clean their waste pans, prepare their meals, change their bedding, comfort them. For one dying, the simplest of pleasantries that we of good health take for granted can be powerful. Some will be bitter, rightly angered when their bodies betray them. They’ll demand we make a dying form whole again. A cruel existence. We can do so much of wonder. Manipulate time, conjure fire, influence the mind. Yet we cannot cure a woman’s diseased lungs or excise a malignance in the brain.
“Many of these people have none to care for them beyond our halls, compounding their pain. For those whom we can, we restore life. We endow them with the rest of their time. On occasion, we do what we believed we could not. Many whose illnesses are beyond us feel accursed. Low, as the creatures that scurry along the ground. ‘Tis our duty to bring a different wholeness to this lot, to show them that our blessed Mother has not cursed or forgotten them. She is here through us and outside of us. Inside of them and with them, She lives.”
“Do you feel it so?” Amun said at a near whisper.
He smiled. “I must, for I remain.”
They strolled about the house for half an hour or so. There were beds sorted by age and gender, segregated by illness. They passed women, men, girls, and boys with diseases of the flesh that ate at their skin and caused it to peel and blister. Others endured sicknesses that tore at them from within. Some patients received curative treatment, while those too far along got palliative care, kindnesses in their dying. Deacons read stories to them, talked with them, made them grin and laugh, fed them.
Garron and Amun returned to the woman suffering from consumption. She had not moved. Amun walked to her bedside, a foot away. Garron stepped beside her. The sick woman’s eyes held a glazed, distant look.
“How are you feeling, Mys?” Amun asked her.
The woman coughed. “I’m dying. Ye?”
Amun sat in the chair nearby. Garron remained standing.
“Mys, what is your name?” Amun took the woman’s hand, pale and near skin and bone.
“Katya Irrelin.”
“I am Sister Amun Halleck. This is Father Garron Latimer.”
Katya coughed with her lips closed, sounding more like she had cleared her throat. “Ah.” She motioned to sit up with effort, pushing back on her elbows. “Nice to meet ye.” A jagged breath drew in through her nose.
Amun glanced at Garron and back to the woman. “Do they treat you well here?”
“Sister Halleck, I don’t think Mys Irrelin may want to expend her energy answering questions. Mys, would you like us to leave you be and let you rest?”
“Nay, Father.” The woman waved her hand. “I’ll die whether I talk or lie quiet. Might as well have the company. Questions don’t bother me none.”
Amun tilted her head toward Garron and then refocused her attention on Katya. “If I may ask, did you hear anything of the events taking place in the square?”
“I did. The sisters speak low but we still hear. The dead tell no secrets. They might as well not bother.”
Some dead.
His eyes meandered between the pair of them. What was Amun’s objective? Had he not been there, the house would not have permitted Amun to speak to the woman, let alone allowed her inside. He shot a look over his shoulder. The deacon at the entrance observed them from her station.
Amun leaned closer to Katya. “What do you think of it?”
“I reckon,” she answered, with a delay as if to collect her thoughts, or to stave off wheezing, “that it’s a service to the Mother. Our Church has kept us safe. The Empire prospers under its rule. Reapers are malice made flesh.” She coughed once with her face turned away from them. “Send them to their Master.”
“Do you find that most people you know hold the same view? Please, be true.”
The woman chuckled. “Why lie? I’m soon dead.” She readjusted on her elbows with a wince. “Some ages’re better than others, but ye do us well. The Vicar is a good man. Ye bring honor to the All-Mother and Her kingdom, sound living to the people. Can’t say I’ve much to complain on.”
“How do you feel about the restrictions on the Aether?”
Katya shifted her gaze to her body, a slight mound beneath layers of blanket. “Most don’t use magic what’s affected. I never had a talent for it.” She swallowed. “If Mythos had their fashion, they’d destroy everything. Loot the Palace, burn the city. No’n ye’ll find wants to work in service of heathen gods.”
