The Black Rose

by James Bartholomeusz

  Everyone in the room nodded, and several saluted. Jack couldn’t help admiring the fact that, at a time when her nerves must be shredding even more than his, she was able to command the respect and obedience of her crew.

  “The priority is to get to the Precinct and back,” Sardâr explained as they made their way towards the hatch. “We get the prisoners out and then worry about gathering information.”

  Dannie climbed the ladder first and hauled open the hatch. As she and Sardâr moved out of the way, Jack got a look at the disc of sky above them. It wasn’t promising—obscured by writhing clouds and illuminated by lightning. The churning air was reflected exactly in the mirror in Ruth’s hand as droplets of rain began to collect on it. Something from GCSE English came back to him. “Pathetic fallacy.”

  “What?”

  “When the weather reflects the mood.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Ruth grimaced. “I’m ecstatic about being here.”

  Chapter II

  the diocese of lord tantalus

  Jack got a shock while clambering out of the hatch. The Golden Turtle’s stealth mode was very effective—so effective, in fact, that it appeared he was standing in midair. “Why don’t we use this more often?” he asked Ruth once he had tentatively shuffled to actual ground level.

  “Good, isn’t it? The problem is it doesn’t work in water. The ship’s invisible, but water’s still displaced: people tend to notice a turtle-shaped vacuum. Mind you, in this weather it might not be so good…”

  The sky was indeed a matrix of warring clouds, hues of rock clashing high above, sporadically frozen in frames of lightning. Rain extended like a blurred curtain to the ground, droplets forming into miniature tributaries that flowed between the paving beneath their feet.

  Stone walls hemmed them in on all sides, with only a single covered alleyway leading to their right. Beyond the walls, towers were alternately silhouetted and illuminated against the sky. It was, Jack thought, exactly the kind of place the Cult would have their headquarters: something like a city-sized concentration camp.

  Sardâr raised his hood over his head, and the other three did the same. Nothing now distinguished them from any other members of the Cult. The tallest of the new black cloaks nodded and turned, leading the way down the alley and out onto the main causeway.

  They emerged onto a wide avenue. Cubes of clinical neon were suspended from a rail that ran directly above the center of the road, highlighting the panels in harsh blocks of lime. The dark grey buildings rose on either side: their height, thin windows in grids, and extent of erosion identical. Jack saw the towers beyond: dark monoliths at various distances with no pattern of construction discernible. A flash of lightning ripped the sky open, and in that moment he saw the building that dwarfed them all. A gargantuan cathedral, set with stained glass windows and mounted with spires, reached to the heavens. Next to it, connected by a spindly walkway, a single spike plunged upwards into the air.

  “I think that’s the Precinct of Despair,” he whispered, pointing as the lightning faded.

  Sardâr produced the mirror and held it up like a map. The surface danced with indigo light. “I think you may be right. Let’s go.”

  “Bit of a melodramatic name, isn’t it?” Dannie quipped.

  She was ignored. No one was in the mood for humor.

  The four black cloaks turned left up the avenue and began walking. The road was curved and seemed to proceed in a wide arc around the center of the city, taking them no closer to the cathedral and prison within. Nevertheless, Sardâr followed the mirror, and although the purple lights meant nothing to Jack, he was sure the elf was able to understand them.

  It took him several minutes to realize they were not alone. Figures in groups of no more than two or three skulked along the edges of the street in the shadows of the buildings. It was hard to make them out. At first he thought they must have been Cultists, but then Cultists didn’t move like that: they strutted as if they owned wherever they walked. He squinted to his left and right, trying to determine what they were. They were definitely humanoid. They might have been demons, except that he wasn’t confronted with the instinctive bile-raising sickness which told him he was in the presence of Darkness. In fact, he got the impression that the figures were purposefully avoiding his gaze, moving along a little more quickly if they saw him looking.

  “What do you think they are?” he whispered to the black-cloaked shape the rough build of Ruth.

  “I’m not sure.” Ruth was looking now too but apparently with similarly little success.

  Ahead of them, the line of regular grey blocks was broken by a church, which was about three times as wide as the surrounding buildings and at least twice as tall. It was constructed in the same gothic style as the cathedral, with tall, thin windows and arches and decorated spires set like horns. The cubes of light picked out gargoyles hunched in alcoves, leering with stone malice at the figures trudging inside.

  “Look out!” Sardâr hissed.

  Jack didn’t immediately see what he was referring to, but then his stomach turned at the sight of an actual Cultist striding towards them under the alternating light and darkness.

  “Brothers! Sisters!” he saluted them, arms spread wide. “You have come to take part in our ceremony?”

  None of them seemed to know how to reply, but Jack noticed Sardâr had quickly hidden the mirror in the folds of his cloak. It wouldn’t be a good idea, Jack agreed, to look like tourists at this point.

  “Actually,” Dannie blurted, “we’ve got urgent business in the Precinct of—”

  “Nonsense, nonsense.” The Cultist chortled, extending thick fingers to steer Dannie by the shoulder towards the church. “If the business was really urgent, you would have travelled through Darkness, would you not?”

  “Yes—of course—”

  He hailed another Cultist by the doors and marched them to her. Jack and Ruth exchanged panicked glances. It was bad enough that they were being diverted from their mission, but knowing nothing about the Cult’s rituals, they would surely be discovered as enemy agents.

  The second Cultist nodded as the first explained the situation. “Please follow me.” She led them past the trundling line of figures and through the door. As they passed over the threshold, Jack caught a glimpse of the symbol carved over the door: a black rose, wreathed in thorns, sprouting a spiked Roman numeral.

  The inside of the church was cavernous. Columns extended from the entrance to the back; the figures filtered into the worn wooden pews between. The windows and vaulted ceiling were decorated with images of demons and sorcerers, and the far wall was covered by a large fresco depicting a roaring black dragon, wings spread wide and flames belching from its jaws.

  “Is this your first time in the Diocese of Archbishop Tantalus?” the female Cultist inquired as she led them up one of the side aisles.

  The four of them nodded stiffly.

  “I regret to say that Lord Tantalus will not be joining us this evening, as he is engaged in important matters at the Cathedral. Which Chapter do you belong to?”

  Jack thought frantically. “Lord Icarus’s.”

  “He is away on a mission, is he not? I thought he would have taken his entire Chapter with him. You are in the process of training acolytes, then?”

  “Yes, yes, we are,” Sardâr replied quickly. “They are coming along well.”

  “And so they should, under the guidance of our Lord Emperor and the might of the Dragon. Those chosen to serve must be strong enough to wield the Darkness, must they not?”

  The four of them grunted in assent.

  They were taken to six high wooden thrones on either side of the fresco, where one Cultist was already seated. Jack sat in the chair uneasily. He didn’t like the ease with which they were settling into their roles as Cultists. It made him feel uncomfortable about the supposed difference between the Apollonians and their enemies. After all, they both moved around populated worlds and fought each other t
here, and no matter the intentions, some casualties couldn’t be avoided. And, since he had slipped into using Dark alchemy, he realized another bulwark between the two sides was removed. War, torture, rage—he was starting to see that these occurrences weren’t unique to the Cult of Dionysus.

  It took several more minutes for the entire congregation to file in and be seated. Opposite him, Dannie was fidgeting and Sardâr’s hand was twitching. Ruth, however, seated next to him, was frozen completely still, gripping the arms of the throne, in anxiety. Though he couldn’t see under the hood, he got the impression she was staring directly ahead, trying to calm herself.

  Finally, with everyone seated and the doors slammed shut, the Cultist who had hailed them took to the front of the podium. He bowed low to the congregation and turned to face the dragon fresco. Then he began his chanting.

  Jack very quickly lost track of the service, which the lead Cultist conducted entirely facing away from the congregation. At points, what Jack presumed were acolytes, adorned in tunics rather than full cloaks, interceded with candles and incense. It reminded him of a church service he’d once seen on a school trip. He wondered then, as now, the point of the congregation being there.

  In fact, it was the congregation that intrigued him. Several things were noticeably out of place. Unlike the Cultists, who all appeared European or Middle Eastern, the witnesses looked as if they were from sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, they all, without exception, looked both impoverished and unhealthy. Every single face staring up at them from the pews was pallid and emaciated, and their clothes were ragged. And what Jack found the most surprising was the deadening silence among the congregation: absolutely no whispering, fidgeting, or creaking of wood. In contrast to the Cultists’ swaggering arrogance and affluent elegance, their followers looked beaten down, submissive, and terrified.

  The chief Cultist finished his chanting and, with a sweeping swirl of his cloak, turned to the audience. The silence tautened. He spread his arms wide. “Now, to end our prayers, we shall be conducting a test of faith. We shall summon an avatar of our Master to arbitrate the worthiness of our congregation. The clean shall be separated from the unclean, the faithful from the faithless, the goats from the sheep.”

  He turned again towards the fresco. The two real Cultists stepped down from their thrones and, a little too hurriedly, Jack, Sardâr, and Dannie followed. Ruth remained frozen to her chair.

  “Come on,” Jack hissed, trying not to attract the attention of the other Cultists.

  “Bedazzled by the presence of our Master, is she?” One of the other black cloaks sniggered.

  The chief Cultist raised his arms again. The stone slabs between the seven of them blackened and sunk, dissolving into tarry liquid. The pool of Darkness began to bubble, and out of its center rose a spectral shape: an impossibly tall woman, swathed in robes, clasping something that looked like an infant child to its chest. Jack saw its face and felt the familiar nausea. Where eyes should have been there were only pits of shadow, twin pinpricks of crimson light hanging like will-o’-the-wisps in the center.

  The dark liquid had not disappeared. It was now oozing down the steps, flowing as down a conduit into the midst of the congregation. The people looked stricken, horrified—but not, Jack realized with a mixture of disgust and rage, surprised. It seemed terrorizing the congregation was nothing new.

  The dark liquid oozed under the benches. It was then that the wailing started.

  Chapter III

  the precinct of despair

  An elderly man leapt, screaming, his nails digging into his cheeks. His voice was a hoarse wailing. “I’ve doubted! I’ve doubted the truth of the faith.”

  A woman several rows back stood, eyes set dead ahead. “I’ve prayed for salvation to a different god!”

  A young man, only years older than Jack, writhed and wailed, “I’ve tried to end my life.”

  The confessions continued, the air rent by cries. A dozen people, possibly more, were now on their feet, apparently lifted against their will. The Darkness had extended to cover the entire floor in an obsidian sheet.

  Jack glanced from the congregation to Dannie to Sardâr. He couldn’t make out the elf’s expression beneath the hood, but he could see his gloved hands were balled into fists at his sides. He looked back at Ruth. She faced the congregation, her body entirely rigid.

  The Darkness had thinned and congealed into netting, an inky web tracing over the slabs, connecting all the standing individuals. Even as Jack watched, the alchemical energy was filtering up their bodies like the contents of a syringe, wrapping them in the web. They collapsed one by one and began moving. Some of them fought it; others seemed too entranced to notice themselves being hauled like baited insects to the front of the church.

  He could feel the rage brewing inside him—what he now recognized as the first throes of Dark alchemy. He breathed in heavily and exhaled, trying to keep it under control. He was sickened, but if they were to keep their cover, he couldn’t do anything about it. But then, these people were clearly suffering—probably about to be consumed—and could the four of them really stand by and allow that to happen?

  There was a flash of ivory light, and the demon imploded in a cloud of black smoke. Silence descended. The captives rolled free; the congregation was stricken; the real Cultists stood frozen. Jack looked around. Dannie’s arm was extended, a device something like a Taser crackling in one of her gloved fists.

  The head Cultist spun around, his eyes bulging in confusion and rage. He lifted an arm as if to strike Dannie down, but Jack was too fast. In a heartbeat, he had summoned his energy and sliced his incandescent palm in a karate chop into the sorcerer’s neck. The Cultist crumpled, unconscious.

  The other two turned on them, but Sardâr and Dannie were ready: the former reflected a dart of energy into an eye; the latter used a diamond of light to shatter through a hastily conjured shield.

  When the last real Cultist standing had slumped onto the steps, Jack looked up. The congregants, still appearing as if the pause button had been pressed, stared at them in shock and fear.

  How would they explain this to them? Jack couldn’t even begin to grasp an answer.

  Sardâr spoke in an exaggeratedly imperious tone. “These priests are enemy agents who succeeded in penetrating our home world. The four of us were sent to deal with them for the greater cohesion of our community. Leave now and return to your homes, and be vigilant.”

  It apparently took a few moments for the message to sink in, and then the first groups of people began to seep out. The ones who’d been entrapped by the demon looked most shaken, eventually picking themselves up with the help of others and shuffling out.

  “Why did you say that?” Jack hissed at Sardâr as the doors swung shut.

  “We need cover. It’s bad enough that we interrupted the ritual, but if we’d revealed ourselves, we’d never have made it out.”

  “But they wouldn’t have told anyone! Did you see how terrified they were? They would have been thankful. Maybe they could have helped us!”

  “They may have been terrified, but they’ve clearly been indoctrinated. Brainwashed. We couldn’t trust them.”

  Jack turned away, rubbing his eyes. He didn’t like how close they had come to allowing a demon to consume people. He knew they needed to retain their cover, but he knew he would find it very difficult if it was at the cost of not intervening to save someone.

  Ruth was still motionless, staring at the point where the demon had been. Jack pulled her hood down, checking if she was okay. Her eyes were wide, and she was panting as if she’d been running.

  “Are you feeling alright?”

  She nodded slowly, not really looking at him. He guided her to a seat and gave her some space. He was uneasy, but her reaction was extreme. She’d seen demons before and fought them—this had been nothing new. He wondered whether any of her memory of Nexus was returning to her. She didn’t seem able to speak, however, and they had to get on the move again
.

  After stowing the Cultists’ bodies behind a pillar, they crept out of the church in single file and continued up the street. Sardâr had produced the mirror again and strode with head bent, tracing the purple patterns across the screen.

  The figures on the fringes—the same sort as those in the congregation—were still there, shuffling in and out of the main neon lighting.

  “Who do you think they are?” Jack whispered to Dannie, glancing to either side.

  “I’m not sure… They don’t seem dangerous, do they? They just seem…”

  “Depressed?”

  “Yeah—or oppressed.”

  “Well, who wouldn’t be, living here?”

  They walked for at least an hour. Lightning continued to rip the sky, intermittently illuminating the clashing structures above. Rain cascaded in a continuous veil, giving the impression of a murky force field hovering above the ground and their cloaks in a vaporous sheen.

  Jack soon lost any sense of where they were. They darted down alleyways, through side streets, and back, attempting to negotiate Nexus’s labyrinth. The fact that they didn’t encounter any other Cultists didn’t reassure him but, instead, put him on edge. Even if they had fooled the congregation, the priests would return to consciousness soon enough and alert others to intruders. Though he had faith in Sardâr to guide them to Lucy and the others, he knew their apparent ease of espionage couldn’t be put down solely to their skill or the Cult’s incompetence. In this world, entirely alien to them, they had no way of telling whether they were being watched.

  Then, finally, they turned a corner and the ground fell away before them. Hundreds of feet below, the tightly packed grey buildings spread out, descending into a steeply layered spiral almost like a colossal amphitheater. Out of the center, plunging upwards like a gigantic tombstone, stood the Precinct of Despair: a talon of metal and stone, an architectural impossibility, tapering off to a single column of stone at its base. Set against the storm-rent sky, hundreds of lights pricked holes in the darkness like malevolent eyes. A narrow walkway stretched over the abyss before them, driving diametrically into the side of the tower, a neon-lit door visible at the opposite end.