Monument

by Ian Graham

  ‘Despite their flair for the beautiful,’ said the Warden, ‘the architects of the Sacros were practical men. This cell has been designed to create echoes; and these echoes pass through that opening, and travel along a pipe to a chamber nearby. Every utterance can be clearly heard.’ The Warden smiled. ‘In the Sacros, a condemned man has no secrets. If he takes a piss, the splashing sounds as loud as a waterfall. If he farts, it roars like thunder.’

  The other Wardens laughed.

  ‘If he plots an escape, however crude, that too will be heard. Now: it is midnight. The Oak’s branches have been stripped bare. And Nu’hkterin hungers.’

  ‘Nu’hkterin,’ murmured Ballas. ‘Who … what is Nu’hkterin?’ He wondered if it was an animal of some sort. Something that would feast upon him in the moments before his death.

  ‘Be patient,’ said the Warden. ‘In time, your curiosity will be sated.’

  The Wardens took Ballas and Gerack from the cell. They led them out into the courtyard. The gates were opened, and they stepped out on to Papal Square.

  It was a clear, calm night. Stars shone. Moonlight illuminated the Penance Oak. Eight hundred paces away, it was a spindly silhouette: an upthrust of jagged blackness. Ballas’s stomach tightened. He felt a faint touch of panic. A part of him wondered how many men’s heads had been nailed to the Oak. How many had made the final walk across the Square.

  He shook his head. It did not matter. He was destined for the Oak. That was the vital truth.

  He struggled tentatively against the Warden’s grip. If he could break free … if he could run from the Square, into a side alley …

  The Warden jerked his arm higher up his back.

  Tendons stretched. Ballas gasped.

  It did not take long to reach the Oak.

  Gerack, who had been weeping, grew hysterical. He gave a plaintive half-bestial scream. It soared above the Square and drowned out every other noise: the crackling torch flame, the creaking of the breeze-stirred Oak’s branches. It was as heart-freezing as a wolf’s cry. It was a noise of utter loneliness.

  ‘Be quiet.’ Stepping forward, the torch-bearing Warden punched Gerack in the stomach. He bent at the waist. Sinking to his knees, he struggled desperately for breath. Ballas recalled how, in the dark placidity of the cell, the other prisoner’s breathing had been strained. Now it was savagely laboured. He gulped air frantically, like a landed fish. Bright tears started from his eyes.

  Footsteps sounded.

  Restrained by the Warden, Ballas couldn’t turn to see their source. He simply listened as they drew closer.

  The Wardens straightened and drew back their shoulders.

  ‘Blessed Master,’ the torch-bearer said as he bowed.

  The Master who had interrogated Ballas appeared. At his side stood a far shorter figure, wearing a robe of brown wool. A deep hood was pulled up, concealing its features.

  A monk? wondered Ballas. A priest of some sort?

  The Blessed Master pulled a dark cape tightly around himself. ‘It is a cool evening,’ he said, glancing at the Wardens. ‘Let us begin, yes? I have no wish to freeze to death.’ He produced a scroll. Unfurling it, he read, ‘On this, the eleventh day of the eleventh month, nine hundred and ninety-six years after the Melding of the Four, it is my duty to initiate the execution of two men who, in accordance with scriptural imperative, have been tried, and have been found guilty of holy crimes. Gerack Galkarris, of the holy city of Soriterath, you hired a magicker’s service—when it is against the Four’s teaching to practise or benefit from magick.

  ‘Anhaga Ballas, of no permanent lodgings, you murdered in cold blood a Servant of the Church—when it is decreed that those who pledge loyalty to the Four, and to the institutions that represent them, must not be harmed by mortal agency.’ His gaze flicked between Gerack and Ballas. ‘You are each sentenced to die a redemptive death upon the Penance Oak.’

  Turning, he nodded towards the robed figure.

  The figure drew back its hood. Its flesh was bone-pale, wrapped tightly around a protuberant skull. Its eyes were down-slanting slits, its nose two tiny holes. It had a thin incision for a mouth. Its pate was hairless.

  The figure was a Lectivin.

  Ballas gaped. Lectivins were extinct. They had been annihilated during the Red War.

  He stared intently at the creature.

  Its face had a heavy solidity. The brow jutted, an overhang of thick bone. Its lips quivered, skinning back from short sharp-tipped teeth. As if it were a hunting dog. Closing its mouth, it chewed slowly. Brown saliva bubbled on to its lips. Ballas smelled visionary’s root.

  Suddenly, a faint memory stirred. Hadn’t some Lectivins been born blind? Hadn’t they gained sight through visionary’s root?

  Ballas looked at its eyes. There were no whites, no irises. Only glossy scarlet flesh. Yet in them there was a glitter of intelligence. Or of brutish awareness, at least. Its gaze was not locked on Ballas. Somehow, though, it was seeing him.

  Gerack’s hysteria had subsided. Now he shivered, and murmured something over and over.

  ‘They do not exist, they do not exist …’

  ‘At will, Nu’hkterin,’ said the Blessed Master.

  The Lectivin approached Gerack. The Wardens forced the prisoner down on to his knees. The Lectivin placed a slender-fingered hand upon his head.

  ‘Gavis covaris ectin,’ it said—its voice halfway between a growl and a rasp. ‘Elterrev suvin movarin, Cohlarin edris uvarite …’ The words were foreign, unintelligible. Ballas presumed they were in the Lectivin language. Yet the Lectivin itself seemed to be struggling with them. As if it found speech difficult. ‘Cuarav malavic sovari, Kalac kristiv hovarite …’

  The Wardens stepped back from Gerack. At that instant, he arched backwards. And shrieked.

  His eyes rolled white, his body spasmed.

  ‘Malverne cujaris espive,’ continued the Lectivin. ‘Mantari saluvi somnalis …’

  For a short time, the incantation continued. Then the Lectivin gestured briefly to the Wardens. Grasping Gerack’s hair, they jerked back his head.

  The Lectivin reached inside its robe and pulled out a hooked blade of some white material—ivory, perhaps. Angular sigils marked its surface.

  The Lectivin moved behind Gerack. Then it pressed the blade’s inside edge against his throat. Slowly, it pulled the blade through the man’s neck. Ballas realised, feeling faintly ill, that the blade must have been indescribably sharp. The Lectivin did not saw it back and forth to pierce the flesh. Nor did its alien features betray any exertion. The blade split Gerack’s throat as if it were insubstantial—a piece of silk, maybe. Or a cobweb strand. The cutting edge sank through skin, flesh and muscle. There was a muted squeak as it rubbed against vertebrae. Then it emerged blood-wet from the back of Gerack’s neck. His body slumped to the ground. His heart was still beating; gushes of dark blood pulsed from the gory stump that protruded from the top of his now headless torso.

  The Lectivin held up Gerack’s sliced-off head by the hair. Turning, it handed the grisly thing to a Warden. The Warden braced it against a low branch. From a hip bag, another Warden took out a mallet and a long nail. He pressed the nail’s tip between Gerack’s eyes. Then he slammed the mallet against the stub-end, sinking the nail an inch deep into his skull.

  Gerack’s severed head shrieked silently. The mouth jerked open—yet, with no lungs to supply air, not a sound emerged. In Gerack’s eyes, the irises rolled down; the head stared wildly at the Warden.

  The Warden struck the nail again. It slid another inch deeper. In Gerack’s face every muscle quivered. The mute screaming continued.

  The Warden hit the nail again and again until only the stub-end was visible. It looked like the tail of some brain-devouring worm burrowing into Gerack’s head.

  The Lectivin approached.

  ‘Elkiros marra skivon,’ it said, ‘Calvarris cunjarik makaros …’

  A blue light appeared under Gerack’s neck-stump. Gradually it took s
hape. It shifted, and then it resolved into a vague, ever-fluctuating outline of Gerack’s body.

  Gerack stopped screaming.

  A look of nervous terror touched his features. As if he was now expecting something worse, far worse than he had suffered so far. As if he was waiting for an even greater pain— and willing it never to arrive.

  The Lectivin raised the blade. A blue light, the same hue as the outline of Gerack’s body, glowed from it. Slowly, the Lectivin dragged the blade through the outline.

  Gerack shrieked. No sound erupted from his mouth—nor did it need to. His agonised expression was more telling than any noise. His jaw hinged fully open, stretching more than was naturally possible. His eyes bulged, threatening to burst from their sockets. His nostrils flared as blood seeped from his nose.

  Like a surgeon, the Lectivin probed around with the knife inside the outline.

  The creature smiled raggedly. As if tasting rapture, it half-closed its eyes. Its lips quivering, it seemed to sniff the air.

  This continued for some time. Then it withdrew the knife.

  The blue outline shrank back inside Gerack’s neck-stump.

  The prisoner’s head shook wildly. It seemed as though it would dislodge itself from the Oak. But suddenly it grew still. The neck muscles slackened. The eyes grew blank.

  ‘What have you done to him?’ breathed Ballas.

  The Lectivin did not reply.

  ‘What have you done?’ snapped the big man. He had known Gerack for only a few hours. But he felt a sudden kinship with him. It was a self-serving kinship, Ballas knew. It was said that death was the most solitary experience. And Ballas, about to die himself, did not wish to be alone.

  ‘It has tortured the sinner’s soul,’ said the Blessed Master.

  Ballas looked sharply at him.

  ‘It is a talent of certain Lectivins,’ explained the Master. ‘To have one’s soul devoured is the highest pain. So much so that the human form—that is, the physical being to which the soul is attached—cannot adequately express the agony of it. We cannot scream loudly enough; our muscles cannot clench tightly enough. It is pain beyond all that we are designed to suffer. It is pain from another world.’ He looked evenly at Ballas. ‘I do not exaggerate. Nor do I conjecture.’ He smiled—a fleeting quirk of the lips. ‘This you will discover for yourself.’ Turning, he nodded to the Lectivin.

  A Warden punched Ballas in the stomach. The big man was thrust down on to his knees.

  The Lectivin approached. Its pale hand settled on Ballas’s head. Ballas tried to squirm free, but a Warden looped an arm around his throat. Two other Wardens tightened their grip on his arms.

  The Lectivin applied a gentle pressure. Ballas felt its fingertips hard against his scalp. ‘Gavis covaris ectin,’ it began. ‘Elterrev suvin movarin, Cohlarin edris uvarite …’

  Numbness crept into Ballas’s legs. It was a familiar feeling—that of a muscle locking solid.

  He tried shifting his leg. It would not budge. The stiffness increased around his knees—and it hurt: it felt as if the muscle was trying to burst the joint from its socket.

  Soon he could not move. The Wardens backed away.

  Pain ripped through Ballas’s body. His spine warped backwards. Every atom of flesh seemed to burst into flame.

  The Lectivin’s incantation continued. With every rasped word, Ballas’s pain increased. Ballas tried to howl, to scream for help—or mercy.

  Suddenly the Lectivin jolted. Its incantation faltered. The creature took a step back—as if perturbed.

  Ballas did not know what troubled the Lectivin.

  He knew only that the numbness had left his body. Crying out, he sprang to his feet. Spinning round, he punched the first Warden in the face. The second he struck in the throat with the edge of his hand. Both men fell. Whirling back, Ballas drove his balled fist into the Lectivin’s face. He felt smooth, parchment-thin skin against his knuckles. And bone.

  The entity staggered, the curved blade slipping from its fingers.

  A third Warden approached. Ballas swung a booted foot into his crotch. The Warden pitched forward, slumping on to his knees. Ballas hit the Lectivin a second time. The creature swayed, then fell. With full force, Ballas kicked it in the face. His boot struck it under its jaw. Its head shot back and it sprawled on the ground.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ballas glimpsed a figure approaching.

  The Blessed Master ran at him, unsheathing a silver-hilter dagger. Stooping, Ballas swept up the Lectivin’s knife. In his hands it was light, easy to handle.

  The Blessed Master faltered, hesitating as though Ballas had done something extraordinary.

  Ballas sprinted towards him. As he swung the Lectivin blade, the Master raised a defensive hand. The weapon sliced straight through his fingers. The bloodied digits pattered to the ground. The blade continued on, shearing through the right side of the Master’s face. A blood-wet clod of hacked-off flesh fell at the holy man’s feet. His exposed eyeball quivered in a red socket. A slab of bloodied muscle trembled, laid open to the air.

  The Blessed Master drew a creaking breath. Then he fell to the ground.

  Ballas dropped the hooked knife. Turning, he sprinted across Papal Square, heading for a shadowed alleyway.

  Two Wardens blocked his path. As he approached, they turned around, hearing his footsteps.

  Within seconds, Ballas was upon them. Leaping feet first at one Warden, he slammed his boots hard into the man’s chest. He toppled, gasping. Landing heavily, Ballas snatched the fallen Warden’s dagger. Rising, he drove it down through the other Warden’s collarbone. Then, wrenching it out, he watched the second Warden slither to the ground.

  Ballas glanced across Papal Square.

  Then he ran off into the night.

  Chapter 6

  And these four Pilgrims knew not

  Of a fifth, from beyond the water,

  Serving no master but itself,

  Bowing to no will but its own …

  Ballas awoke.

  He lay in the ruins of a dwelling place, in a northern part of Soriterath. Frost glittered upon tumbled bricks. Through the raftered but unthatched ceiling he saw a hard dawn sky.

  He wondered, briefly, how drunk he must’ve been to doss down in such a cold, unsheltered place. He wondered how much he had imbibed. For certain, it had been a heavy night—

  A succession of images flashed in front of his mind’s eye.

  The Penance Oak. A Lectivin. A head freshly nailed to an oak branch. A Blessed Master, half his face sliced away.

  Ballas jerked upright. Sweat glued his clothes to his body. He was trembling. ‘Pilgrims’ blood! Sweet bloody grief!’

  He struck the underside of his fist against the wall. Then he raked his fingers back through his hair. Waves of alarm surged through him. He had not merely been sentenced to the Oak, but he had escaped. He had not merely escaped, but he had mutilated—possibly killed—a Blessed Master in the process. The scale of his misdeeds chilled him. He lay motionless for a few long moments, absorbing his situation.

  He had to leave Soriterath. A man hunted by the Church— for, surely, the Masters would be seeking him—ought not linger in Druine’s holiest city. There were more Wardens in Soriterath than there were anywhere else. And all, Ballas was certain, would be eager to arrest him.

  Ballas got to his feet. Cautiously, he peered out of the ruined dwelling place. The thoroughfare outside was empty. Licking his lips, the big man contemplated his next move. Across the street there was another derelict building. A spike of broken glass, stabbing up from the window frame, held his reflection. Ballas moved closer and the image grew clearer.

  He looked at the reflection of his face. His hair was long, his beard matted. His nose was skewed to one side, visibly recently broken. Bruise circles ringed both eyes. His lips were split and swollen. On his forehead, the skin was frazzled pink where the Warden had crashed the torch against it. In the centre was an ugly semicircular scar, made by the hoo
f of Carrande Black’s horse.

  Such injuries, even in a violent place like Soriterath, were unusually severe—and eye-catching. Wherever Ballas went, he would draw attention to himself. If he was to survive, he had to remain unnoticed.

  He rubbed his jaw, thinking.

  Footsteps sounded along the thoroughfare. Nerves jangling, Ballas looked around. A youngish man, tall and lean, was walking towards him. Under his arm he carried a loaf. And, folded but not wholly concealed in dark cloth, a portion of what looked like uncooked ribs. There was a small market place half a mile northwards, Ballas recalled.

  As he approached, the man’s gaze fell on Ballas who watched his expression for any flicker of unease. Or of wary recognition.

  Nothing.

  Ballas lifted a hand in greeting. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘I take it the market is open?’

  The man smiled—a genuine, unsuspecting smile. ‘It is, it is.’

  ‘Good,’ said Ballas. ‘I am not well. I need cod liver oil— and bull’s blood.’

  ‘You look awful.’ Halting, the man looked Ballas up and down. ‘You have been in the wars. What, in mercy’s name, happened to you? You look as if an avalanche has rolled over you …’ He winced. ‘I am sorry: forgive my bluntness. Tact is something I have yet to master.’

  Ballas thought quickly. ‘My tale is not a pleasant one,’ he said. ‘By trade, I’m a Papal Warden …’ At this, the man straightened up. Now a blend of edginess and undue respect touched his features. ‘Oh—be at ease,’ said Ballas, smiling amiably. ‘I hold no grudge against you—unless you were with those who beat me. Which I know you weren’t. For they were familiar to me. I arrested them yesterday morning, for some petty crime. I treated them leniently, demanding only that they pay a fine. Yet it damaged their pride, I reckon. And made them vengeful. Last night, as I was leaving a tavern, they set about me. I’m not a small man—as you can see— but there’s only so much even I can do. So—ah—they gave me a thrashing.’

  ‘A thrashing?’ The man’s eyebrows shot up. ‘They have done more than that. I’d wager they were trying to kill you.’