The shore they stepped onto was forested as well. “It’s an island,” Nolan assured her. “Maybe twenty acres worth. Can’t promise we’re far enough offshore to be impregnable to the fire, but the moat and the rain together should keep us safe.”
“Is there any place to get out of the rain?” Elissa asked worriedly. “I’ve got that page with the Bilge Glyphs in my robes, and a copy of the Exemplar Serinitas. If you think spilling salt on a weasel is bad luck, just imagine letting a holy book get ruined.”
“I can find a place,” Nolan nodded, “if you’re not too picky.”
The path began to climb steeply up and away from the shore, heading toward the center of the island. Soon it passed between the remnants of what had been a pair of stout stone gate posts, though whatever the gate had been guarding seemed to have been long-since reclaimed by the forest. “Stay close,” Nolan cautioned Elissa, “and watch your footing. We’re going to have to leave the path and hunt around a bit.”
The warning about the footing proved well-justified. Slabs of moss-covered stone lay everywhere, cracked and scattered among the trees. Most lay flat against the ground, or leaning against the trees, but when Elissa spied a few of them standing more-or-less upright, she realized the ruin she was walking through was the ruin of a graveyard.
“Suddenly I’m feeling a bit picky,” Elissa said warily. “Where exactly are we taking shelter?”
“Over there.” Nolan pointed. “I think the roof’s intact. It’s the only one on the island that might be.”
No one could have called the mausoleum that loomed out of the darkness a welcoming sight, but it did seem creditably intact for a structure that had surely seen more decades than Elissa had seen years and had probably gone untended for half of them.
They paused at the door sill, and Elissa bit her lip as she studied the facade apprehensively. Even before the years had taken their toll and the forest had swallowed the graveyard, this building had been no cheery testament to a better life waiting in the embrace of Seriena. It had been—and remained—a harsh and blocky perch for scowling gargoyles, and a canvas of dark-red granite onto which countless skulls had been etched.
Even the watchful eyes of Seriena carved above the doorway seemed they must have looked down in grim judgment back before some very-determined vandal had taken a chisel to them. Now all that remained of those eyes was a pair of black pits so deep that by lantern light there was no knowing they didn’t pierce clear through to the chamber beyond.
“The trees will keep us fairly dry if the storm doesn’t get too bad,” Nolan offered when Elissa hesitated.
“No.” She shook her head as resolve replaced the doubt on her face. “No book dies on this librarian’s watch.”
Corroded iron fixtures hung askew in the entrance to the mausoleum, a rust-red memory of a door long-since vanished, and the building stood open to the night. Elissa started determinedly up the three stone steps to where the deeper darkness swallowed the light of their lantern, but Nolan wordlessly held out a restraining hand and pushed past to enter first himself.
The skull motif continued on the inside of the building, down to engravings on the floor tiles underfoot, half-hidden by dead leaves that had blown in through the open doorway. Stone sarcophagi flanked the central aisle to the left and right—four in all—their lids lying askew next to them as they probably had for decades. Some brackish water had collected in one of the sarcophagi, but anything else they had ever held had been claimed by grave robbers or wild beasts, or else simply fallen to dust.
At the far end of the aisle, a cowled figure carved from rose marble and leaning on a headsman’s axe loomed over a flight of stone steps descending into the bedrock of the island. The thing’s tattered robes and skeletal face immediately put Elissa in mind of the scarecrows scattered about the fields and orchards. That in turn reminded her of the watching figure that had unaccountably vanished, and she shivered, her eyes falling on marble blade of the headsman’s axe.
“Miraculata Carmine,” Nolan told her, noticing Elissa’s interest in the statue.
“Miracu…lata?” Elissa asked falteringly. “That’s a holy woman?” Studying the statue, she could imagine there might have been what the sculptor intended as a hint of hip and breast beneath the robe, and the figure did possess a certain gaunt slenderness that seemed unfit for wielding the huge axe. At first glance, she’d just dismissed that as suggesting the skeletal nature of the headsman, but perhaps the artist had meant to suggest something else by it.
Or perhaps not. Elissa suspected she was at least a hundred years too late to question him on the matter. “I’ve never heard of Miraculata Carmine.” That puzzled Elissa more than anything. Impostor priestess though she was, she was a well-read impostor priestess.
“Patron of the condemned,” Nolan said. “They say that if she touched a man who had been wrongly executed, he would return to the living.”
“That’s…quite a miracle,” Elissa said.
“Or black magic, depending on who’s telling the story,” Nolan conceded. “You heard more of the ‘miracle’ stories back before the last visit from the Inquisition.”
“Ah.” Elissa nodded as understanding dawned.
“Nowadays, she’s the witch who gave a spark of unholy life back to the vilest murderers and bent them to her will. My grandmother told the stories differently, and some of the folk who live out here still call her ‘miraculata’ among themselves, and pray to her for the souls the Inquisition took during their last visit.”
“Still a rather macabre protector,” Elissa said, moving forward to study the statue more closely.
“What do you want from the champion of last resort?” Nolan asked. “Butterflies and rainbows?”
“No!” Elissa blurted. “Not that! Skulls and axes are good, I guess,” she finished weakly.
She followed Nolan down the steps into a chamber of similar size, where more sarcophagi lay open and empty, and black scorch marks on the floor and ceiling bore witness to fires past. They would clearly not be the first travelers to take shelter here, but for now they seemed to have the place to themselves.
“Lady Minda knows the area well enough to check for us here,” Nolan said, leading the way back upstairs. “No need to go out looking for her. Curl up and try to get some sleep. I suggest you claim that corner.” He pointed to one near the door. “Doesn’t look like the roof leaks there, and it’s not so much in the shadow of the statue.” He gave a small smirk. “Even I have to admit I’d sleep better without it standing over me.”
Elissa couldn’t argue. She wasn’t a short woman, but he wasn’t a short man, so she stood up on her toes to give him a weary hug and a grateful peck on the cheek. “Thank you, Nolan,” she said sincerely. “For everything.”
He answered her with a reassuring smile, then settled down with his feet braced against one side of the door frame and his back against the other. No sooner had Elissa curled up with her back in the corner than all the fatigue of the long day washed over her in a relentless tide. It couldn’t have taken more than a minute for the wind and the rain to lull her into a deep, deep sleep that no thunder or lightning could shake her from.
The only time she stirred was from a fleeting dream in which a grinning white skull sat atop a moss-covered tombstone on a desolate hilltop. Then a single, blood-red butterfly came flitting down to light gently atop the skull, and Elissa woke with a start.
“You’re insane,” she muttered to herself. “This whole quest is insane. What do you really think you’re going to accomplish?”
Outside, the wind howled and the thunder crashed. The rain came down in relentless sheets, pounding against the roof of the mausoleum, splashing and spattering through it in places. At least none of that splattering was reaching her, she noted with a grateful glance to Nolan where he still sat silhouetted in the doorway. While Elissa had slept, someone had spread what seemed to be a ratty old cloak atop her, and the warm body of something small and furry had curle
d up against her head, purring gently in her ear.
There in the most unlikely of places, she found herself feeling suddenly, inexplicably safe, in a way she hadn’t felt for a very long time. Amidst the dark and the cold and the chaos of the storm, Elissa of Brookshire drifted gently back into a contented and dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Cold, Hard Math
“You’re getting ready to spoil everything, aren’t you?” Elissa asked with a preemptive pout. From her seat on a fallen tree, she kicked her feet lazily in the waters of the lake, which had been cool enough to raise gooseflesh on her legs, but retained enough of the warmth of summer to be pleasant once the initial shock had passed.
“By ‘everything’, do you mean the bit where the Inquisition is on our heels and out for our blood,” Keely asked with a puzzled expression, “or just the bit where half the county burned in the night? I suppose I could spoil them both, just to be on the safe side.” She’d submerged herself up to her shoulders, having stripped down and hung her clothes on the branches hanging out over the water. Even her boots hung there, though they remained conspicuously within Keely’s reach.
“I’d meant the bit about where I’d managed to put all that out of my mind for a few hours,” Elissa sighed.
The storm had passed before dawn, leaving behind a mist that held the sun at bay. The muted colors brought back to the world by dawn’s first light hadn’t brightened noticeably since then, though that dawn must have been three hours gone by now.
Keely and Ulric had arrived in the night with Minda and Doryne, and the four of them seemed to have put their heads together with Nolan and done some planning while Elissa was the only one asleep, but had refused to clue her in immediately for some reason, and had kept their voices hushed. It wasn’t until Keely had dragged her down to the lakeside to get washed up that Elissa finally began to get anything out of any of them. So far it hadn’t amounted to much more than confirming Nolan had brought them up to date, but at least that confirmation had been made above a whisper.
For the first time since being assigned their bodyguards, Keely and Elissa had actually been allowed some personal space—though not without some convincing. Keely had begged privacy for bathing, and Ulric had finally conceded that they’d be just as safe here with someone standing guard on the bridge as with someone hovering directly over them. And though the threat of pursuit by the Inquisition could not be long forgotten, the chaos of storm and fire pretty much assured that they’d not be picking up the trail in a hurry. As taxing as the last twenty-four hours had been for everyone, better to gather their wits and their strength while they could than to dive still-exhausted back into the fray.
“Riordan said you killed someone,” Elissa said, deciding that if the time had come to get serious again, there was no point mincing words. She actually still wasn’t sure how she felt about the accusation, even if there was truth to it, but she needed to know.
Keely started to reply, then stopped with her mouth still open, changed gears, started again, then finally closed her mouth and shook her head. “Not really. He meant the rabbit, right?”
“You killed a rabbit?” Elissa looked at her askance. “Why should he…Oh. So he thought…? Gotcha.”
“We’ve got the actual priestess tied up downstairs in the tomb.”
“Oh.” Elissa nodded. “Oh! You’ve kidnapped an inquisitrix?!” She buried her face in her hand and sighed deeply. “I can’t imagine a single way for this to end well.”
“And three months ago,” Keely countered patiently, “you couldn’t have imagined you’d be all the way out here, helping some mad woman who turns into a cat pull a grandiose con on the Inquisition, right? It always washes out in the end.”
“You mean when we’re all dead?” Elissa asked.
“Yes, if not before.” Keely shrugged dismissively. “Look, I know you really don’t want to hear this, but we’ve got even more to worry about than the Inquisition.”
Elissa fixed her with a very dirty look. “What have you gotten me into now?”
“I wish I knew,” Keely said with an uncharacteristic sobriety that set Elissa immediately on edge, “but I’ve been looking and looking for a chance to warn you—there’s something very nasty going on around here.”
“How nasty are we talking?” Elissa asked guardedly. “I mean, on a scale of one to Inquisition.”
“Not sure.” Keely shook her head. “Possible it breaks the scale. Certainly closer to ‘Inquisition’ than to ‘one’. But we can’t tell anyone else, because it’s local and it’s got deep roots. There’s some sort of ritual killings going on.”
“Ritual? Like a demon cult?” Elissa asked, her glib facade faltering.
“Yeah,” Keely said, looking away into the mists. She hadn’t put those words to it before, but couldn’t imagine what else it could be. “I saw the remains in the water at the bottom of that shaft in the Tooth. They’ve been piling up there for hundreds of years, and still piling, by the look of it. It…wasn’t pretty.”
It dawned on Elissa suddenly that for all their weeks together, right here, right now, she was seeing Keely for the first time. The bravado and bluster, the masks and the misdirection that forever swirled around Keely like water around a fish, had all dried up to the point Elissa marveled the woman hadn’t begun to suffocate without them. Whatever she’d seen, it had left a mark that would not be quick to heal. “I’m sure it wasn’t,” Elissa said quietly.
“This stays between us, though,” Keely said. “Ulric and Nolan don’t know anything about what’s going on there, and neither does the countess—none of them batted an eye at my having fallen in the pool. But this thing—whatever this thing is—has got deep roots, and anyone else local could be involved. Each person who knows we know is one more person who can let slip to the wrong ears. And if Earl Haywood himself turns out to be the lord high cultist, don’t think our bodyguards won’t become our captors.”
“They can’t afford to let anything happen to us,” Elissa countered, ”or we wouldn’t have those bodyguards to begin with.”
“Which do you think would be easier for the Earl to survive? Failing to protect us? Or having the Inquisition find what’s in that pool? I mean, if we disappear, he’s just one unfortunate accident away from being rid of the one woman who’ll care.”
Elissa nodded, biting her lip. “Between us, then. And I’ll be on my guard against the locals, too. Thanks for the warning.”
“Sure you’re not coming in?” Keely asked when the silence began to drag.
“Quite sure.” Elissa smirked coldly. “The thought’s already giving me waking nightmares of Lady Haywood back there interrogating me about my tattoos.”
“She’s all the way back up at the crypt.” Keely chuckled.
“So am I, in those nightmares. It’s the whereabouts of my clothes that are in question.” Elissa kicked water in Keely’s direction. “All I know is that in the nightmare I’ve lost them again to one of your crazy schemes. I’ll be keeping them on, thanks all the same.”
The sound of someone crashing through the fallen leaves on the hillside brought both of them turning to see Nolan hurrying their way without any show of concern for what state of dress they might have been in. “Don’t ask how,” he said before they could question him, “but the Inquisition’s already here.”
Sabina’s first thought was that she desperately needed a drink. Her throat burned so raw from smoke and dehydration that it reduced the terrible aches all over her body to so much background noise by comparison. She would have moaned as she rolled over and tried to push herself up on her hands, but forcing that much air through her throat set off a blindingly painful coughing fit that left her flat back on the ground, whimpering silently.
Finally, after the worst of the pain subsided, she dragged herself over to a hollow in the rock where the rain had collected in the night, and scooped water into her mouth as quickly as she could bear to gulp it down. Then she collapsed agai
n, and indulged in several minutes just listening to her aching body tell her she was alive
The world smelled of rain, with an undertone of ash. The heat of the inferno had gone in the night, replaced with the chill of the rock walls around her. She’d passed out after finding shelter from the fire, but before finding shelter from the rain—and on top of everything else it had left her cold to the bone, her dress completely soaked through. The poor thing was not only ruined; by now it hardly seemed fit for scrap.
Sabina idly wondered if there was any way she could possibly find her way back to Ariadne and the coach, with its nice trunk of clothes, without being seen in public in such a state. Then she took stock of her body to see if there were any other discomforts vying for attention, prioritized its needs, and decided that the first one would be getting up on her feet so the rocky ground would stop sucking so much heat out of her.
With no small effort, Sabina pulled herself up and looked around. Her next priority would be finding a way to actually get warm. Nothing offered itself here short of stripping off her sodden clothes and going naked—a prospect that hardly seemed worth the return for the risk—so that made her next priority getting to somewhere that was not here. That didn’t leave a lot of options. She hadn’t come far past the wall of rock she’d clambered over to get here, but she lacked the prospect of a fiery death to push her back across it.
What she had instead was aches, stiffness, and a manicure already ruined by the first climb over. She would not attempt it again without at least looking into the other remaining option, which was to continue along the cleft in the rock to see if it led anywhere.
Where it led was a stair, which was promising in and of itself. People did not generally carve stairs into solid rock without the intention that they should assist in a climb to somewhere of importance. In Sabina’s experience, important places tended to be more warm and sheltered than unimportant places, and they also tended to have more than one way in. In this case, that would translate to more than one way out.
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 28
