by Adam Golden
Anything.
With a proper light source secured, Arius ventured farther and farther away from the dreary, dark, sameness of the upper abbey. He wandered the warren of corridors and wondered about the ancient order of men who’d strode those same halls. Who were they? Had they been the same dark, half human creatures as their descendants? Somehow that image didn’t seem to fit. The Saulites appeared to have been something grander, something brighter once. An order of earnest devoted priests who could smile and laugh in the light and prowl in the dark perhaps? Maybe a life of hunting and killing, years of staring into the abyss, made it impossible to see anything but darkness. He hoped it wasn’t so, but he couldn’t deny that he’d long felt the creeping darkness, even before he’d came upon the Brotherhood. Perhaps it was magic itself, the corrosive corruption of unnatural powers that darkened the soul. After all, he’d yet to see any practitioner of the forbidden arts unstained by it, had he? He had no way of knowing, and so he confined himself to his searching.
Arius rifled through long abandoned chests of rotted vestments, searched cabinets long empty, save for rat droppings, and lamented ancient prayer books left to rot in the moist darkness. Now and then he found something useful, candle stubs left in ancient chandeliers and candelabras were a particular favorite. His greatest treasure, however, was a battered, dented bronze lantern that immediately replaced his shabby, half-rotted torch. At night, in his dreary little cell, he melted the disparate bits of wax he’d scavenged and saved into greasy, smoking new candles to feed to his precious lantern. It gave him something to do, kept him from being idle in his grief and rage. News would come from the hunters soon. It would, and when it did the Abbot would recall his existence and send for him to report that Nicholas was finally dead and then . . .
What?
What then? What would the old excommunicate have then? Justice? Vengeance? Maybe. Peace? He doubted that he’d ever know peace. Doubted that he ever really had. The fact was that Arius’ hunt had consumed him for so long that he couldn’t really fathom life without it, and so he didn’t. He pushed thoughts of after away. Now there were the catacombs and the Brotherhood, and later . . . that was for later.
—
The red door shone like the sun to his color-starved senses. At first, he didn’t believe his eyes, he’d discovered how the deep dark could play tricks. Noises were amplified, distorted, and changed by miles of twisting stone corridors. Flickering shadows and imagined movements from the corner of the eye were constant. People just hadn’t been formed for long periods out of the light, it began to weigh on the soul and wear on the mind, and it didn’t take all that long to begin doing both. The former priest thought that may have been a large part of what afflicted the Brotherhood. Those who’d sworn off the light for years could hardly be expected to be normal men.
He’d actually been musing about the effects of darkness when he spotted it, just on the edge of the pale orb of dirty light cast by his lantern. To him it might have been a brilliant beacon of rich crimson breaking up the hated darkness, in fact, it was a heavy wooden door sheathed in iron so rotted with age and given over to rust that none of its original color remained. Once he understood what he was seeing, the old man’s wonder wasn’t dimmed, if anything it increased. A door sheathed in iron. Every door he’d seen in the catacombs had been of plain, unadorned wood. Even those doors he’d been prevented from passing had been simple rough-hewn, utilitarian wood, yet here, in the deepest depths of their abbey, was a heavy, carefully constructed door of squared timber, sheathed in a plate of beaten iron, and hung with cast iron hinges.
It was a door made to hold up against an assault.
What was it doing there?
Arius expected it to be locked, or else to be so caked with age and decomposition that it was fused in place, as a result he took hold of the door’s heavy ring with both hands, squared his ancient shoulders, and heaved with all his strength. The huge door gave with minimal effort, sliding easily on surprisingly well-greased hinges, and the old man was thrown off balance, crashing backward into the wall with a surprised squawk.
His first look into the disdained repository felt to him as though he’d unearthed some ancient Pharaoh’s long lost sepulcher. The heaps of ancient texts buried in ages of cobwebs, the smell of moldering paper and wood, the twisting motes and clouds of ancient dust, it all gave the sense of a place lost to history, a place alive with mystery, and secrets just waiting to be uncovered.
He’d spent nearly every waking hour of the two days since his discovery wading into, and often burrowing through, the huge volume of information contained there. Some of what he found was written in languages he couldn’t begin to fathom, others appeared in symbols and glyphs so strange he doubted they belonged to any language at all, but thankfully most was in plain, if sometimes archaic, Latin or Greek. Yet even when he understood the words, the old priest was often at a loss to understand the meaning of what he read. Magic, it appeared, was a discipline which required a great deal of study.
At first, his reading, like his explorations, was a simple distraction, an entertainment in a place utterly devoid of joy, but as the hours went on, the indecipherable rituals and obscure mysticism became something more. The scholar in Arius was pulled in by the puzzle of trying to make sense of this alien world of information, and the hunter in him couldn’t deny the potentially powerful weapon he’d stumbled upon.
The Saulites were failing to defeat Nicholas, just as he had failed himself. Given strength, he’d tried to batter the damned murderous sorcerer with raw will. He’d failed. The Saulites had strength and knowledge but lacked the will to truly explore that strength. They were failing as well. Nicholas would not be defeated by anything less than a perfect blend of strength, knowledge, and will. He was too powerful, to well-studied, and too intelligent. The old man knew that, if nothing else, he had the will. What was his life if not a testament to that fact? Somewhere in this treasure trove of blasphemies was the knowledge and strength he needed to pair with that will, and so his distraction became a quest, a new and different sort of hunt.
His investigations quickly grew to fascinate the defrocked clergyman. It astounded him how often various groups and cultures through the ages had discovered the same sorts of abilities. They’d given them different names, assigned them different sources and mythologies, but they were the same. The same series of spells repeated over and over again throughout time and in a myriad of places. Spells for controlling the elements, or the weather, or other people, spells for communicating with, or raising, the dead, or demons, or angels, or various deities, spells for divining the future or spying over long distances—they were all there, repeated again and again. Once he would have dismissed that as the product of the same fears and desires coloring people’s superstitions, but he’d seen too much. Magic was real, the power was real, and apparently there was more than one way to access that power.
He read of the manipulation of elemental forces, of Summonings and Seeings. He poured over texts on herbs and potions, on the colors and materials of candles and their various uses. He paid particular attention to Bindings, spells made to ensnare, trap, and sometimes even capture magic. Arius took it all in with a hunger he’d reserved for vengeance all these long decades. He wanted it all, or nearly all of it anyway. Some of what he found was too disturbing, too dark for him to consider, let alone delve into. The manipulation and desecration of corpses, and the summoning and enslavement of souls were things he knew he simply couldn’t do. Wherever he saw such things mentioned, he threw the text aside and chose another. It would close off entire areas of the power to him, but there were some lines he simply could not cross. His soul might have been a stained and tattered thing, but enough of it remained to recognize an uncrossable boundary.
The old man had been sitting hunched over a massive text open on his knees for so long that blinking no longer brought his exhausted blurry eyes all the way back into focus. His back, buttocks, and legs were so sore
with the long hours of sitting that at first he doubted whether he’d be able to unbend enough to stand. When he managed it the chorus of aches, cracks, and pops sent a clear and bitterly accusatory message. His old body could not be abused in this way if he expected it to go on hauling his stubborn old mind about.
Still, his eyes drifted to the ruins of a bookcase which had rotted through on one side and collapsed. Its load spilled in an orderless cascade on the already crowded floor. He’d taken two interesting texts on candle magic and a primer on protective circles from that heap today, perhaps one more quick look would offer up another jewel? He moved toward the pile, and his knees creaked as though objecting to his plans.
The book was exquisite, and far heavier than he would have imagined. In his weary state, the old man found himself straining and staggering to get the massive tabletop folio over to the place he’d designated as his reading area. The huge book was covered with leather-wrapped wood and seemingly untouched by damage or age. A quick brushing of the thick coat of dust which covered everything revealed a deep crimson finish still dark, rich, and supple, it’s edges embossed with runes and glyphs Arius couldn’t begin to fathom. It was the image in the center of the massive cover that held his eye, though. The embossed image was of a strongly built and elaborately armored man in a tall helm and holding aloft a flaming sword, a man perfect in every measure and complete with a massive set of gilded eagle’s wings.
An archangel!
Arius traced the image with reverent fingers, feeling a jolt of anticipation from the text. This was something special. He just knew it.
The pages inside were heavy vellum and each one was a masterwork of the art form. Perfect rows of delicate, precise calligraphy were paired with breathtaking hand drawn illustrations on every single heavy page. The old man was awestruck, he’d known monks who dedicated their lives to works such as these, and he knew this text must have been the work of years, maybe decades, of painstaking, back-breaking labor. He’d never seen anything quite so elaborate.
Each image was a scene of battle. Brilliant winged figures of pure light grappled with twisted, snarling creatures who seemed all fur, teeth, and blood. In scenes so detailed and vivid that Arius felt vaguely ill, it was as though he was looking through a window at the actual conflict. There was an unsettling sense of realism, of life to the figures.
The old man was entranced, but also vaguely disquieted.
He’d turned no more than twenty pages when they suddenly gave way to a hidden compartment. Most of the huge book was, in fact, a box lined with thick velvet. Lying inside was a tablet as long as his arm, more than two hands wide, and completely covered in strange hash marks and symbols which meant nothing to Arius. The only other thing in the box was a small bone carving, shorter than Arius’ index finger, and just about as wide. Unlike the book it rested in, the carving was a rough, primitive, ugly thing, a leering, capering, naked demon, mouth open to display cruel fangs and a lolling tongue. Arius was overcome with a strangely strong revulsion, and yet, before he realized what he was doing, his hand shot out and closed around the figure.
Waves of fire and ice exploded over the old monk. His soul shot free of its containing vessel and streaked through a universe of brilliant stars and constellations, through an endless expanse of cold nothingness. He plummeted through joys too wonderful and agonies too intense for any mortal being to withstand. The whole tapestry of time lay strewn out before him, he teetered uncertainly on the knife edge of the yawning abyss, and it all happened simultaneously over and over again. A thousand lives made of innumerable choices and possibilities were lived and discarded one after another. Friends and enemies, loved ones and strangers, he saw everyone, everything. War and birth, death and salvation, play, torment, love, indifference, all distinct but all the same, the slow shifting of the world, the unfathomable pulsing of existence . . . he saw it all, he understood, he was everything!
He hit the wet stone floor hard and it, whatever it was, was gone. The library was gone. A pair of featureless Brothers in their unchanging black robes were retreating through a door, presumably after dropping him where he was. The door slammed shut with a gut-wrenching finality.
“What . . . What’s happening?” Arius croaked. His ancient body hurt, he felt so small, cripplingly simple, and limited. He’d been so big, so full. It was slipping away! “What . . .” he started again.
The space between the bars in the heavy wooden door was filled by the enraged, ink-bedecked face of the Abbot.
“What’s happening? You dare . . . !”
The dead clam that was the only tone the old man had ever heard from the ghostlike Abbot was gone. Here was pure affronted anger. “Our Brothers fight and die even now! We struggle against your hated enemy and all the while you make fools of us!”
“Brother Abbot . . .” Arius started, more than a little shaken by the other man’s snarling visage.
“Be silent!” the monk roared. “For centuries we have borne the burden, given our lives, our very souls to a battle you cannot conceive. We have taken the corruption of unnatural forces into our bodies in order to meet the enemy, and now we find that enemy within our very walls. Feeding on our foolish pride, our vanity.”
Arius tried to speak again, to apologize, to ask for a glimmer of understanding. The dark priest rolled right on in his rage without ceasing.
“Your wickedness has showed us our folly, your temptation will make us strong. The evil that we have allowed to fester in our fortress is even now being cleansed with the flame!”
The Abbot, eyes wide with wild, zealous fury, paused, and in the silence his meaning dawned on Arius. The library! He’d done something, something magical, and they’d felt it, now they were purging the library. Arius opened his mouth to protest.
Be still.
He didn’t hear the words as much as he was filled with the sense of them, and yet there was the distinct sense of command, of a separateness from himself, a direction. His senses told him the abbot hadn’t heard. The monk was speaking still, but Arius had no room for his words.
What . . . ? he started to think.
Be still.
“. . . here you will stay!” the Abbot finished, and then he was gone, without even a footfall to mark his passage, and Arius was left kneeling in the dark, clutching his strange talisman, utterly deserted and yet somehow not alone.
Battle and Barter
The one with the broken teeth sprayed an arc of bloody spittle as Tulio’s hard left hand spun him around before he toppled into unconsciousness.
The big one with the impressive collection of burn scars that crisscrossed every visible patch of flesh roared like a beast and launched a chair that Nicholas barely managed to avoid. The broken chair hit the wall, shattered, and joined the litter of broken crockery, splintered furniture and prone bodies which evidenced Tulio’s distinct diplomatic style. The Bishop took a second to glare at the manservant’s back. He never noticed, busy as he was. Tulio was holding off a pair of attackers by brandishing a long iron spit, complete with two scraggly game birds which had been roasting over the fire before they’d become a weapon.
Nicholas looked back in time to see his attacker starting a charge. His gave an undignified yelp as he scurried under a nearby table. He wished the alehouse was a little less well-stocked with witnesses. Of course, if the regular custom of the Pikeman’s Lance weren’t so used to, and apparently enamored of, such shows of violence, it wouldn’t have been necessary for Nicholas to scurry at all. He could have cleared the room with a flick of his wrist, though shortly after the whole city would fall on the place with cries of ‘witch’ and ‘demon’, and he and Tulio would find themselves the fuel for a civic bonfire.
The rumors had flown far faster than he’d hoped. Dark magics used at a ecclesiastical conclave, holy Bishops accosted by witchcraft and heretics. Some stories even spoke of blood rites and heathen orgies in the imperial palace itself. The tales grew more outlandish with every telling, but one detail
remained constant: a warlock had fled Nicaea, a sorcerer in the guise of a priest was loose in the countryside. As a result, Pylae was a hotbed of suspicion, raw nerves, and violence. Every other stall in the market advertised some charm, prayer, amulet, or weapon promised to protect from sorcery. Itinerant priests were either attacked as possible witches or else they clogged every corner and crossroad, bemoaning the sinful state of modern mankind, declaring righteous judgement and calling for vigilance against the demon hordes that would soon descend upon them all. People walked around stroking knives or hefting clubs, looking crossways at strangers and whispering about those who had been friends before the hysteria. He and Tulio had seen more than one person bleeding in the street, and more than one burned-out shop in the city proper. Once they’d passed the invisible, but very real line into Pylae Wharf things only grew more dangerous.
A group of drinkers at the far end of the common room cheered, their earthenware mugs slopped as they shot into the air in salute. Nicholas barely dove out from beneath the table before the brute intent on crushing him demolished the flimsy thing with his next strike. The drinkers roared and hooted their pleasure at the spectacle, and the big man screamed in inarticulate rage.
