The Pagan Night

by Tim Akers

  The doma at Gardengerry was dedicated to Lord Cinder in his aspect as judge and the long winter. At the festival of the Frostnight, the flood of pilgrims traveling north to pay homage to the gray lord brought crowds of ash-robed worshippers through its doors. The door to the temple was polished frairwood bound in silver, a testament to the doma’s wealth. The torches that illuminated the passage were fine silver, the tapestries silk and cloth of gold. The twin-horned altar of Cinder and Strife at the building’s center was carved from a single block of marble.

  The blood that spilled from Allaister’s blade soaked into silk robes. The skin the blade parted was soft, unaccustomed to hard work. The frair stood in front of the altar, calling down judgment on them. He clung to his staff, somehow staying upright as Allaister put a sword into him, over and over again. The frair eventually settled to the floor and was quiet.

  The celestes put up more of a fight, screaming as Allaister’s men cut them down. The stone walls of the doma were thick and quiet. No alarm was raised.

  When they were finished, Allaister’s men gathered around the altar, their chests heaving. Crimson spotted their robes. Tunnie’s eyes were wild and free, a bloody sword gripped in each fist, one that he had brought and one plundered from the ceremonial instruments of the winter god. The others were a little more hesitant, unsure if they were excited or terrified, or simply scared of how much they enjoyed the blood.

  They had a lot of potential, this group. Allaister looked around the room, at the slumped body of the frair, the celestes all crumpled in one corner, blood streaked on the granite floor and pooling beside the altar.

  A good night.

  “Well done, lads. A fine harvest,” he said with a smile. He kicked the frair’s staff, sending it clattering across the room. “We’re almost done.”

  “Almost?” Joer gasped. “We have to get out of here. There were horns sounded when we were at the wall. It’s only a matter of time before they come here. We need to leave.”

  “We can’t go empty-handed, my friend.” Allaister swept a hand across the doma. “The priests are dead, but the church can send more. It would just be a matter of days before prayers are said again, and blessings are given. Seems a waste, don’t you think? To come this far, and leave so much behind?”

  “Not part of the plan,” Tunnie said, but his eyes were eager.

  Special potential in this one, Allaister thought. “Not part of your plan, maybe,” he said aloud, “but I’ve thought this through. There’s good silver in these cabinets, and jewels in plenty.” He pointed at an ornate knife that lay upon the altar, its handle ivory and jet. “How many pigs will this buy, do you think?”

  “They catch us with these things, it’ll be our lives. Our families,” Joer said nervously. “They’ll grind our bones and salt our fields.”

  “There’s already blood on your hands, friend. Why not gold in your satchel as well?”

  A short wave of concern went through the group, but Allaister had them. Even if they ended up dumping most of it in the river, there was wealth enough here to see them in comfort for the rest of their lives, and theft was an easier crime than murder. Allaister sent them into the doma’s outer chambers to scrounge what they could. Anything that would burn was brought to the altar.

  He kept Tunnie at his side.

  “How’re we to get this stuff back home?” Tunnie asked as the pile of loot grew. The men were falling to their task with enthusiasm, splintering the wooden rings of the orrery, prizing sconces from the walls while leaving enough to light their way. It was considerably more than they could carry.

  “Let them have their fun,” Allaister answered. He plucked the frair’s staff from the floor, using a silk cloth to wipe the blood from its icon, then leaning it almost reverently against the altar. “Do you know why we came to Gardengerry?”

  “To kill priests.”

  “Yes, but there are priests throughout Tenumbra. Hell, there are priests in Tener itself—we could have crossed the border into Adair’s land, or Blakley’s, and done our reaving in relative safety.”

  “Halverdt land is our land. It was taken from us.” Tunnie was watching him with a measure of confusion. Allaister shrugged.

  “Yes, yes. All true,” he agreed, “but really, the whole island was taken from the tribes—Gardengerry was just taken most recently. No, my reasons are older than that. The old city, the one that was here before, was unoccupied when the Suhdrin lords came north. The ruins of a grand temple. Empty.”

  “It’s a cursed place,” Tunnie said. “Cursed by the gods.”

  “No, not exactly. Even the few shamans who remain in the north have forgotten the story of this place.”

  “What are you getting at, Allaister?” Tunnie asked. The twin swords in his hands hung limply now, the thrill of killing ebbing away.

  “There was a henge here—a temple, to a different god. One the pagans saw fit to lock away.”

  “Here?” Tunnie looked around.

  “Exactly here. This room.” Allaister swept a hand over the doma. “A shrine before it was a temple. Holy before it was sanctified.” They were alone, the rest of the men scattered to the outbuildings. The town guard would arrive soon. He had to be fast. “It was a place of sacrifice long before the Celestial prayers haunted the air.” With that he swept the ornate knife off the altar and put it into Tunnie’s heart. The blade, thin and sharp, punched straight through.

  “Gentle, now… gentle.” The dying man struck out, but his blows were weak, and Allaister fended them off. He eased him to the stone floor, supporting his neck until Tunnie’s eyes were sightless. It was a quick death. Better than the celestes were allowed.

  “My apologies, friend. This is a complicated time in my life,” Allaister whispered. “I have a lot of things I’m trying to figure out.”

  The holy knife snapped, the blade buried in Tunnie’s body. Allaister dropped the handle and took a hatchet from his belt. He used it to split the man’s chest open. The ribs cracked one at a time, until the heart and lungs appeared. Whispering an endless stream of prayer and invocation, Allaister drew out the organs, arranging them on the ground.

  There was a sound behind him.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Joer gasped. He had just come into the room, a double armful of candlesticks pressed against his chest. These clattered to the stones as he drew his blade. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Something holy,” Allaister answered. “You should be happy about this.”

  Joer didn’t have an answer. He started to call out… then stopped, horror stealing the voice from his throat.

  Allaister rocked back on his heels, squatting over Tunnie’s steaming body. He sprinkled a handful of dirt, gathered at another henge, blessed by certain heretics he knew.

  Something happened to the air. The shadows that hung beneath the altar, trapped there by the flickering light from sconces, grew heavy. They crawled between stones, leaking as black as ink through the cracks, until they gathered against Tunnie’s still form. The shadows stitched together and spread like a web over the dead man. They reached into the cavity of his chest. Allaister took a step back, a smile ghosting over his mouth.

  Tunnie stood. His veins pulsed with shadow, and his eyes leaked a greasy fog. He turned to Allaister, dragging the wreckage of lung and heart across the floor, dangling from his chest like afterbirth. One hand still held a blade.

  “Hunt,” Tunnie’s mouth said, but his voice was grinding bones and tearing flesh.

  “Hunt,” Allaister answered, “but first, this place must be sanctified.” He stepped aside, gesturing to Joer. “These men have profaned your holy ground. They must be cleansed.”

  Tunnie turned to Joer.

  “Cleanse,” he said in that unholy voice.

  “I would run,” Allaister said to Joer. “Though there’s little point in it.”

  Joer ran.

  Tunnie took a single step toward him, and the shadows that flashed through his veins splashed
down into the cracked stone. They sped across the floor like lightning, tangling into the fleeing man’s feet. Joer screamed. Tunnie’s blade ended that. Then the tendrils of shadow swirling through doorways and crawling up the walls, seeking out the others.

  A scream echoed in the distance. Tunnie lumbered toward it, dragging his heart behind him.

  Allaister waited by the altar as his servant-god cleansed. And then it was time to hunt.

  2

  THE ROAD TO Gardengerry was quiet. There was no other traffic but Artur’s fruit cart, and no sound but the birdsong from the woods and the creaking of the cart’s wheels. Little Marie sat on the bench next to him, humming quietly to herself. The cart was full of apples and not a few peaches.

  They were on their way to the Allfire festival, hoping to make a little coin before the summer turned, but Artur had left a little early, and was riding a little fast, because no one in his hamlet had heard anything out of the ’Gerry for more than a week. Artur had a brother in Gardengerry, and he was worried. So he loaded the cart, made some excuses to his wife Catha about getting in before the competition, and set out.

  Along with the fruit, he hid the rusty old wood-splitting axe under his seat, wrapped in burlap to keep his wife from seeing it. Didn’t want her to worry, which was why he didn’t have an excuse for not bringing Marie. The wife had promised their daughter that she could go to the next Allfire, and Artur had no way of breaking that promise.

  He kept telling himself that he was being silly about nothing, that Gardengerry had a good, strong doma, that gheists didn’t go near holy ground, and certainly not this close to the Allfire. Holy days made for safe roads, the priests always said. Still. He would rather have left the girl at home.

  Marie was oblivious. She hopped off the slow-moving cart and plucked a handful of wildflowers from the side of the road with her chubby hands, stuffing some of them behind her ears before she clambered back up onto the cart. The rest she piled into her lap, twisting the stems and tying the tiny flowers together into random shapes, humming all the while. Artur looked down at her and let his nervousness soften.

  “What ya got there, lady love?” he asked.

  “My favor. I’m going to give it to a knight at the market, and he’ll be my lord husband and kill bugs for me.” She had a thing about bugs, putting them at about the same threat level as wildfire and bad pudding. “We’ll live in a castle, like Uncle Teodre.”

  Uncle Teodre was Lord Hastings Teodre, Artur’s sworn master, though to be honest he was just a minor baron in a minor holding, and his castle was a motte in the mud. Marie treated him like the celestriarch in Heartsbridge. Teodre, for his part, treated his sworn men like family, especially during the holidays. Artur patted her on the head and smiled.

  “There’ll be no knights at this market, love. Gardengerry has no tournament to bring them in. Just peasants and merchants and maybe a priest or two. Do you know who will be there?”

  “Uncle Connor?”

  “Yes, Uncle Connor, but also the sweets man. Do you remember the candy apple you had last Allfire?”

  Marie nodded enthusiastically, the flowers forgotten in her tiny fingers.

  “Well, if you’re good and quiet, there will be another. What do you think of that?”

  Marie stared at him, her mouth firmly clenched shut, her little cheeks quivering.

  “Well, you don’t have to be quiet yet, lo—”

  “I would like that very much!” Marie yelled in a burst of childish joy. Artur erupted in laughter, leaning over in the seat and shaking, until he realized that the cart was slowly drifting off the road. He corrected the mule and then gave Marie a warm hug with his free arm.

  “Well, love, we’ll see to that. Now, you’ve dropped all your flowers on the road. Gardengerry is close, and you wouldn’t want to get there without the proper favor to give your lord knight, would you?” He gave her a little shove and she squealed. “Better mend that.”

  * * *

  Marie squirmed off the bench and hopped down to the road to look for more. When they had started their trip, it had been a muddy track through the woods, branches hanging down to brush against their faces. This close to town the road was hard-packed dirt and pebbles, with a verge of grass that pushed the forest far from the cart. They were going uphill, near the summit, so the mule strained against even the half-load of fruit.

  There were no good flowers here, just a scattering of budding clover that made terrible favors. Marie peered into the forest, then saw a patch of goldengem up near the top of the hill, just on the border of the forest. She ran ahead, ignoring her father’s shouts to stay close.

  Goldengem was a beautiful flower. One of her mother’s favorites. Maybe, if she got enough of it, Marie could make a necklace to give her when they got home. She could tell Mother that it was a gift from a handsome mage that they met at the market, who had given it to Marie in exchange for three kisses, three promises, and three songs. She had started to pull the flowers up by the stem, tearing great patches of golden flowers up out of the ground, when she looked up and saw that they really were quite close to the town.

  Her memory of the place was fuzzy, but Marie wondered why so many of the townspeople had pulled the roofs off their houses, or why they had blackened the stones of their walls with ash, like the hearth of Uncle Teodre’s magnificent home in the mud. Town folk were silly, she decided.

  There was a rustle among the trees to her right. Marie ignored it at first, and when she turned to look, she gasped and dropped the golden petals to the ground. She could hear her father yelling as if he was at a great distance. He was off the cart and fumbling with a bundle of burlap as he ran toward her.

  There was a man of shadow and darkness crouched sternly by the edge of the woods. He was barely there at all, a mere shell of dark lines like the veins in a leaf, wrapped into the shape of a man. Marie could see through him to the forest beyond, could see trees and goldengem and the bright sunshine. He pulsed with dark energy and stared attentively down at the town, his hands wrapped around a short staff that was tipped with a cruel blade. A cloak like a spider web shivered on his back, writhing in a gale that Marie couldn’t feel.

  Finally he glanced down at her. The shadowman looked as startled as the little girl.

  “Have faith, child. The lord of winter is with you.” His voice was like the echo of tombs, and when he hunched toward her a chill ghosted across Marie’s face. The flowers at his feet glittered with frost. Marie took a step backward. “There is a little girl here,” the shadow said to no one in particular. “Are you from Gardengerry, my dear? Is this your town?”

  Marie stood shivering.

  “No, I’m not frightening her,” he said. “You’re not… little girl, don’t be afraid, I’m a priest of your Lord Cinder, husband of Strife, and the light of winter.” The shadowman peered carefully at Marie, as if measuring her reaction. “She doesn’t seem to understand me… hello?”

  Artur came roaring up, the axe half-unwrapped in his fists, his face red and furious. The shadowman spared him a glance, then sketched a shape in the air between them. A wispy blue knot appeared, trailing behind the priest’s rapidly moving fingers. When he was done, the shadowman breathed into the knot. It frosted like a window in winter, and the air around him crystallized into dark frost.

  Her father stumbled to a halt, his fingers turning blue. It was so cold that Marie was afraid her nose was going to fall off, as her mother often promised it would when she went out in the snow without her hood.

  “Know the servant of Cinder, your god and judge, sir,” the shadowman snapped, a hint of irritation leaking into the bone-deep echoes of his voice. “Doesn’t anyone go to church, anymore? Cinder and Strife, man! Are you citizens of Gardengerry?”

  Marie and her father stood shivering in the sudden iciness, the flowers at her feet withering, the cart behind them creaking forward. The shadowman grimaced and turned back to his view of the town.

  “Never mind. It’s at le
ast as bad as we thought.” He became distracted, tracing the air with a ghostly finger, as though he was running it across the ruin of distant Gardengerry. “I’m coming back.”

  He disappeared without a sound, the warmth and light of summer returning with a violent snap. The strands of the shadowman’s form, the dark veins of his shell, writhed and then slithered together before they evaporated. The ground where he stood, glittering with frost, was the only evidence the strange apparition had been there at all. The circle of white shrank rapidly, leaving only the crushed imprints of two boots, the mud beneath them tinged with ice.

  Gasping for breath, Artur dropped his axe and gathered Marie up in his arms. He felt her all over for wounds, for patches of cold, for anything out of the ordinary. The child was struck dumb, staring at the withered flowers on the ground. Once he was sure his daughter was as safe as she could be, Artur glanced down at the town.

  It was ruined. Huge swathes of the town were blackened by fire, the roofs burned away, the stones dark as coal. Wisps of smoke drifted through its streets. At the center of town the doma stretched stony steeples over the wreckage. Every wooden shutter and stained-glass window had burst open, the glass like brittle teeth in the sunlight. Only the dome appeared intact.

  Artur tucked his daughter against his chest and ran back to the cart. They wouldn’t get home until near dark, but he didn’t want to waste another moment of light. Behind him, Gardengerry sat quietly and waited, smoke twisting in the breeze between fire-blasted walls and the wreckage of ash.

  * * *

  Frair Lucas, inquisitor of Suhdra and holy brother of the celestial church, hung limply against his darkwood staff, the blessed linen straps wrapped loosely around his arms and chest, his elbows resting on the crossbar of silver and darkly polished wood.

  Lucas was a weathered man, old but still spry, his limbs strong from seasons on the hunt, though the years were starting to take their toll. His hair was as white as the snowy crown of the winter god, shot through with gray and black. He was handsome and humble, sacred and strong.