Passing a row of two-story buildings marked as the property of the Teledor Agriculturalists’ Guild, Elias could now see the immense spires and lofty towers of Sarum’s central district. There were a dozen such structures, each impossibly high and immeasurably ancient. Some were constructed of smallish, uniform red bricks, but the majority were of metal and glass that reflected the brilliant sky, but cast doleful shadows on the city beneath.
“Sammy!” Rhiannon cried out as they passed onto Wharf Way. “Elias, stop. We left Sammy!”
Elias kept his eyes on the road, shook his head gently. He’d been dreading her waking. All the while she was asleep he could bury his head in the sand, pretend that it hadn’t happened.
“It was too late.” He hated the sniveling tone, but it’s all he had. “Had to get you away. You know how it was. They’d have … you know… You saw what they did.”
He heard her clambering up from the back, felt her hand on his shoulder, and then she was beside him on the seat, face pressed up close—too close. “We can’t just leave him.”
“I know. But what can we do?” Should have done it already. Should have gone back soon as he realized. Nothing but a spineless chicken. It’s what he’d been all these centuries, why he never went anywhere. You’d have thought being ageless would have made you fearless, but he’d always found it had the opposite effect. It was odd how brave mortality made people. Everything hanging in the balance, death hiding around every corner, but you kind of got used to it. It had been so liberating, in a morbid sort of way.
“Turn around. Take me back.”
Elias shook his head more vigorously now. “No, no, no. Can’t do that. There’s guards around the city. Imperial troops. No one gets in or out. I’m sorry, Rhiannon. There’s nothing we can do. Just pray—” Now there was a thought. “Just pray he’s all right. They won’t hurt a child.” Well, he hoped not, anyway. “Someone will—”
“How’d we get in?”
“What?”
“How’d we get in if the city’s guarded? No one gets in or out, you said.”
Bugger. He couldn’t tell her about his use of the statue, how he’d made the guards turn a blind eye. She wouldn’t understand. She’d insist he used it again. But she hadn’t felt what he’d felt. If he wasn’t a coward before, he certainly was now, after feeling that presence, hearing that sound. Sammy would be all right. Made no sense for the knights to harm him.
“I talked my way in. Told them a sob story about you being on your last legs and me—”
“Then talk our way out.” She turned his face to look at her.
Elias blinked back the tears, pulled away. “Can’t. Said they’d let us in on condition we didn’t change our minds. We go back, they’ll fill us with arrows.”
Rhiannon closed her eyes and seemed to be holding her breath. For a moment he thought she was going to explode, shove him off the cart and head back herself. But then her shoulders sagged and she looked at him with her good eye. “I don’t know what to do, Elias.” She put her face in her hands. “I just don’t—”
“I know,” Elias said. He wanted to pat her on the knee, thought better of it. “Me neither. I’m so sorry.”
They headed towards the jetty and the glistening waters of the Soulsong River, which wound its way through the city before meeting the ocean to the west. Rhiannon leaned into Elias, let her head rest on his shoulder and was soon dozing once more.
Hector turned onto the Esplanade, right into Ishgar Terrace and then left into the cobblestoned Domus Tyalae, at the end of which sat the Templum of the Knot.
It was basically a squat rectangle of clay-brick construction, with a bowed roof and a crumbling transept of age-worn stone protruding from either side. To the rear of the templum, a narrow corridor ran off at an angle, connecting it to a long gray building that looked like it had been recently added on. Shrubs skirted the edges of the templum, and a manicured lawn of sickly brown grass fronted it like a badly frayed rug.
“What you about?” An old man in a mud-stained white habit reared up from behind a wheelbarrow, garden shears in hand. “We’re full to bursting with the sick, and Mater Ioana’s not in, if that’s what you’re thinking. Out tending folk in the streets, she is.”
Elias gently lowered Rhiannon’s sleepy head from his shoulder and cocked his finger like one of those things they had back before the Reckoning… Gun, that was the word. The man was hunched with age, but still stocky and strong. His oily gray hair was slicked back over a gnomic face, worn and ruddied, most likely from years of manual work outdoors.
“A fine Nousian welcome to you, too, Frater…”
“Hugues.”
“Frater Hugues,” Elias continued amiably. “I can see the emperor has nothing to fear from your mission. With charm like yours, the Nousian menace will be extinct within a year or two.”
“Now you just watch it,” spluttered Hugues. “I’ve half a mind to call the militia.”
“I suspect you have half a mind for a lot of things,” Elias said, leaping lightly from the cart. “That’s the trouble with you religious types. Half a mind on the spirit, the other on the flesh. Know what I mean?”
“You’re a very rude man,” huffed Hugues, turning on his heel and trudging towards the templum.
Elias trotted beside him, hoping to sound insufferably cheerful. “It’s not that I’m saying religion is a bad thing. Far from it. It’s the application to real life that’s the problem. Take, as an example, the summing up of the Eleven Holy Admonishments by none other than Nous himself. Number one, love Ain with all your heart and follow all his precepts—terminology’s a bit quaint, but what do you expect? Number two—and check out the paradox, or is it a mystery, aha!—do whatever you bloody well like so long as you’re always hospitable. OK, so I’m paraphrasing, but that’s it in a nutshell! The core of Nousian teaching, and yet you can’t even get that right. Not so much as a ‘How you going, young geezer?’, which would be stretching it in view of my age admittedly. Not so much as a ‘What can I do you for, me ol’ mate?’ And not even the merest tad of concern for my friend here who’s just been beaten and raped by some holy bleeding twat not too dissimilar to—”
Frater Hugues slapped him in the face. A heavy slap, quite jolting, actually.
“More of a navvy than a luminary,” Elias said, putting his hands to his head and blinking away the stars. “Fair point, though.”
“Forgive me, brother.” Hugues fussed around him like a terrified mother who’d just dropped her baby on its head. “You went on so. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Leave him, Hugues.” A woman in white hurried from the templum doorway. A slim, very prim ol’ girl in her late fifties, by the looks of her. She wore enormous glasses that covered most of her face; peered through them with bulging fish eyes. “I’ll see to our guests.”
“Right you are, Velda.” Hugues looked warily one more time at Elias before shuffling off round the back of the building.
“Thank you, Soror.” Elias gave his most theatrical bow. “Your arrival was—”
“Oh, my poor dear, what has happened to you?” Velda walked straight past him to the cart and climbed into the tray to examine Rhiannon.
“She was beaten and raped by…”
“Hush, young man.”
Elias was a little gobsmacked. He hadn’t been called “young man” for … for… Well, since… Not for a long time, in any case. He ran his fingers through his hair and stood by like a naughty child who’d been told off for picking his nose.
Velda held Rhiannon’s head against her breast and cradled her like a mother. Rhiannon stirred and opened her eyes. She let out a sigh and sat up.
“Soror? We’re at the templum, then?”
“You are indeed,” Velda said. “Fret no longer.” She cast a swift glance at Elias. “You will be safe here.”
“This is Elias Wolf…”
“Who, this?” Velda’s fish eyes grew as big as her lenses. “Isn’t that a lovely
name? What is it you do, Elias?”
This was the point Elias would normally do a little jig and then give his deepest bow. If he had a hat on he’d invariably roll it up his arm and flip it back into place. “Bard,” he mumbled, without even a shuffle of his shoes.
“A bard? How splendid. Perhaps you’ll sing for us later. Ah, Pater Cadris.”
An immensely fat priest emerged from the templum, fussing at the strands of hair meticulously combed across his barren pate.
“Hugues said there was trouble,” he declaimed with the pomposity of a bad orator.
“Not trouble, Cadris, just friends in need. Make yourself useful and tether this gentleman’s horse, if you please.”
Cadris paused a moment, as if he were going to protest, but then straightened his robe and waddled over to take Hector’s reins. As he led the horse and cart off towards a lean-to at the edge of the templum grounds, he appeared to be muttering under his breath.
“Pater Cadris is our scholar,” Velda explained as the trio made their way into the templum. “Such a gifted writer.”
The interior would have been very difficult to reconcile with the usual idea of a templum, although Elias had only ever seen the shells of ancient ecclesial buildings until now. The nave was a makeshift infirmary, with coughing, sweating, blood-soaked people lying on pews or palettes on the floor. Whole place stank like an abattoir.
“There are fifty-six patients,” Velda pointed out as she led Rhiannon and Elias down the center aisle. “A small token of the plague’s victims, but it’s the best we can do.”
They looked like writhing hunks of bad meat, bodies weeping putrescence, the air thick with the stench of decay. Elias found his hand covering his nose and pulled it away. Could have been construed as a bit rude, that, so he held his breath instead.
An elderly priestess with a head like a mottled skull tufted with gray, and twisted spectacles low on her nose, was hobbling about ministering to the sick and dying.
“Soror Agna!” Rhiannon cried, rushing to embrace the woman.
Elias wagged his fingers in greeting, having met Agna on a couple of occasions when she’d visited Rhiannon in Oakendale.
Agna held Rhiannon out at arm’s length and examined her bruising.
“Oh, my sweet girl, what’s happened?”
Rhiannon lowered her head and began to shake. Agna looked up at Velda who merely nodded her assent. Agna then led Rhiannon off over the sanctuary and through the sacristy door.
“Do you know,” Velda said, “it never occurred to me that this could be Agna’s Rhiannon. I must be getting soft in the head.”
“Rhiannon’s had this thing about joining the Templum since she was a teenager,” Elias said. “Soror Agna used to make the journey to Oakendale every couple of months to speak with her.”
“Yes, yes, the pre-novitiate. Agna spoke of her often. There have been no other candidates, mind.”
“The emperor’s none too keen on Nousians. I imagine the people either share his views or are too scared to go against them. You must be feeling a bit isolated these days. Since the missionaries at Jorakum packed up and scurried on back to Aeterna, and that nasty business at Delta’s Bluff, there’s been just you and the Pardes community.”
“And Gladelvi.” Velda puckered her lips. “I must see to the sick. If you pop outside, Pater Cadris will find you a room.”
Elias gratefully left the mephitic stench of the templum, passing the skulking Frater Hugues in the narthex. He found fat Cadris just leaving Hector under the lean-to, the cart parked in the shade of a copse of black wattles.
“That is a most fine specimen. The equestrian beast, I mean. Robust and strong as a…”
“As a horse, Pater?” offered Elias.
“As strong as a titan, I was about to say. I see you have some books in your cart.”
“And a few instruments. It’s all part of the trade, you know.”
“Quite, quite,” sniffed Cadris.
“Soror Velda said to—”
“A room. Quite, quite. Come along.” And with that Cadris lumbered towards the gray stone house behind the templum, beckoning over his shoulder for Elias to follow.
OF EVILS PAST AND PRESENT
Shader found the Gray Abbot at prayer in his cell. He waited in silence, casting his gaze about the tiny room. It was bare but for a mattress, a wooden Monas, a carving of the Dark Mother of Ain, and a vast oil painting depicting fire breathing dragons swooping down upon towers of metal and glass.
“It was quite a spectacle,” the Gray Abbot said, rising to stand before the painting. “Countless millions died that day, and those who survived had their culture, their homes and, most devastatingly, their technology destroyed.”
“By dragons?” Shader moved closer to examine the beasts. Everyone knew the myth, but he’d taken huge parts of it with a pinch of salt.
“The dragons were just one dream of many. The human mind contains so much that is destructive. Why should the Cynocephalus be any different, if the legends are to be believed? Abandoned by his mother, terrified of his father. Not to mention Blightey threatening to drink his soul, then stealing his magical armor so that he could wade through the black river at the heart of the Abyss. Huntsman’s magic unleashed the power of nightmare that lay dormant in the Dreaming, the unconscious fears of the son of Eingana. The great civilizations of the Old World were powerless against it.”
Shader had heard the story of the Reckoning many times before; who had not? Its effects were felt by every nation on Earth, the potency Huntsman had invoked rippling out from Sahul like a colossal tsunami. How had Huntsman harnessed such power? Prior to the Reckoning there had been no magic—save the dark kind Blightey had dredged up from the Abyss. There had only been the accomplishments of the Ancients, which had long-since faded into myth themselves. The Gray Abbot seemed to be following his thoughts.
“Huntsman merely applied the key to the lock. That is how he explained it to me when we met.” The Gray Abbot gazed at the stars outside the window. “The statue, whatever it actually is, was entrusted to him by his ancestral gods beneath the Homestead rock. He didn’t know how they had come by it, but it was ancient even then, over nine hundred years ago, and it had been unimaginably old when his gods had first brought it to Earth.”
“Brought it from where?” Shader was starting to lose interest, his thoughts caught up in this morning’s attack and the snatching of the Gray Abbot’s only cherished possession, the oak-carved Monas, with its polished amber eye.
“I don’t think Huntsman really knew. He merely used to say the Dreaming, with a little bit of a shrug. The power of the Statue of Eingana had unsettled him in some way. When the statue divided itself following the Reckoning, he took great pains to find safe hiding places for each of the pieces. The body of a snake, two fangs, and two eyes. One fang was lost to him. He entrusted an eye to me.”
Shader looked up and the Gray Abbot nodded. “I’ve also seen the other eye; I had a hand in restoring it to its rightful guardian. Oh, it was long before you were born, Frater. Our friend Otto Blightey again. I wonder, do they still tell horror stories about him in Aeterna?”
Shader nodded. He’d heard little else during the Verusian campaign: stories of cruel torture, forests of impaled bodies still gasping for days on end. He’d fought the Liche Lord’s minions at Trajinot, creatures like those that had attacked the abbey.
“He was close to the Ipsissimus,” the Gray Abbot said. “Closer than any one should be. He stole the Ipsissimal Monas with its amber eye and combined its power with forces drawn from the Abyss. Latia and its neighbors were devastated by plague. As for the other pieces, where they are and in whose keeping I have no idea. Maybe even Huntsman no longer knows. It’s possible that, after all these centuries, the segments could have exchanged hands many times.”
Shader wondered at the Gray Abbot’s fate now that he’d lost the power of the amber eye. He’d always appeared incredibly vital, but already he looked haggard, his
cheeks sunken, eyes ringed with shadow.
“The creature that attacked you, Pater Abbot, what was it?”
The Gray Abbot studied Shader before replying. “His name is, or was, Callixus.”
“It wore the uniform of the Elect.”
The Gray Abbot nodded. “Callixus was grand master over five hundred years ago. I remember his arrival with the Elect as if it were only yesterday.”
“You knew the Lost?” Their disappearance remained one of the great mysteries of the Order, one of its darkest legends. They had literally given up everything in the name of obedience, and in the best Nousian tradition expected no temporal reward.
“They came to aid the abbey. The emperor had left us at the mercy of the Anglesh mawgs, who terrorized much of what is now the shire of Oakendale. I suspect the creatures had been drawn by my piece of the statue. Huntsman warned me never to use it, but you know how men are. It took months for the Ipsissimus to send us aid, and when it finally arrived…”
The Gray Abbot stared into space, eyes haunted, face pale as a ghost’s.
“I met them from their ships at the Soulsong Estuary. Callixus, a fine warrior and humble with it, led his men towards Sarum where they were to parley with the governor, pledge their swords to purging the mawgs from the Southwest, and then commence with the liberation of the lands around Pardes, which had lain virtually under siege throughout the winter. Governor Travos Gen was accommodating, even in the face of the emperor’s hostility towards Nousian interference. The knights set up camp in one of the western suburbs whilst Travos Gen arranged barracks for them in the inner city. Within two days the entire force had vanished. There has never been a satisfactory explanation for their disappearance.”
“I’ve heard all sorts of theories,” Shader said, “but Aeterna has no official answer to the disappearance. Another contingent was never sent. I believe I’m the only consecrated knight to enter Sahul since.”
“Aeterna was shaken by the incident. The Ipsissimus recommended our recall from Sahul. Most of the other missions took his advice, but we remained. We remained,” he continued whimsically, “at the behest of Huntsman.”
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