Beneath Ceaseless Skies #117
Page 4
Those men and knights among the Orvali army who hadn’t broken died first, falling into the chasm that opened beneath their feet. The cowards died next, and they had a heartbeat to realize they couldn’t outrun their doom. As the empty eye of the titan I’d roused yawned wider, the Orvali camp was swallowed whole: camp followers, palisade, and all. A handful of incautious footmen and a few of Tariq’s riders fell into the abyss, sucked in by the hungry wind or thrown by maddened mounts, but the chasm had barely started towards the hill I stood on before I released my hold on the Eclipse, dissolving it so God could gaze upon the world once more.
As the sun’s rays struck that unnatural void, there was a heart-stopping, thunderous boom, and the Field of Thorns was restored, denuded of the army Immaculate had gathered. I felt the seals I’d shattered slam closed one after another, and then I toppled forward, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Only Ksara’s intervention kept me from falling flat on my face.
“That was glorious,” she breathed in my ear as Galloway burst into tears. “A triumph of applied scholarship.”
“I’m glad you found it so,” I croaked, feeling light-headed.
“My prince,” Tariq said, dismounting beside me as Ksara propped me up. “The day is ours. No trace of Immaculate’s army remains.”
“Good,” I whispered. “Send riders to scout the road to Orval, and break camp once our men have recovered from battle.”
“My prince?” Tariq asked, but consciousness was already slipping from my grasp.
* * *
It took us three days to reach Orval, and by the time we sighted its walls, I’d recovered enough to accept the city’s surrender. The lord mayor and his deputies were joined by those cardinals who hadn’t fled, and as they entered my pavilion their finery reeked of fear.
“Gentlemen,” I said, resting my left hand on my father’s helm and pushing the treaty Ksara had drafted across the table. “These are the terms on which I will accept your capitulation. You will find them generous. Given the circumstances.”
The Lord Mayor blinked numbly as he paged through the treaty. Several of the cardinals hissed or exclaimed as they reached the clause requiring religious toleration.
“You want us to permit heretics to preach their filth on every corner?” Cardinal Varria demanded.
“Your Eminence,” I replied, never raising my voice, “if you do not, I will burn Orval to the ground and let the heretics preach their filth over your dead body.”
“For the love of God, Varria, give him what he wants,” Galloway said, wringing his hands. “He killed his own father and nearly ended the world. He’s capable of anything.”
“He wants to veto the appointment of popes and bishops!”
“Your Eminence,” Ksara said sweetly, “perhaps Prince Anton was not clear. These terms are not negotiable. You will sign, or we will put Orval to the sword.”
They signed, of course. Orval’s walls were a sieve, and Immaculate had stripped the city of arms and fighting men. Resistance was hopeless; a child’s fantasy.
That afternoon, I entered Orval by the Martyr’s Gate, the master of a city without books.
* * *
It has been two years since that day, and Orval is greatly changed.
The Grand Processional is now the Avenue of Feet, named for what remains of the statues that lined it. Every pope who praised the Arutanian Crusade or the burning of books has had their bones exhumed and memorials desecrated. Nearly a hundred clerics who preached rebellion were gibbeted or burnt at the stake.
Every month for a year, news came of another rising, of another lordling convinced my forces were overstretched. Every month, another rebel fled the field, routed by Tariq, or died screaming with his blood boiling in his veins. Now the provinces lie supine, too terrified to revolt.
Scholars will name me tyrant and parricide; fornicator and heresiarch. Let them say what they will.
They cannot take this from me: Ksara and I have restored the libraries that Immaculate and his vandals burned. Ten thousand women have learned to read and use a pen, and been set to copying works by Cochrane, Matthias, and Parathemus. The prayer books of the Freeholders are in half the households of Orval now, and new tracts and block-printed codices spring up each day. Galloway’s efforts at censorship only encourage those he would suppress.
I will not delude myself into thinking I have made another Arutanian Crusade impossible. As Ksara frequently reminds me, the memory of mortals is short and their folly great. Still, Immaculate and my father wanted the world to stay credulous and ignorant. I say, let learning and dissidence blossom where they may. If scholars must name me Anton the Cruel, let it be a peasant’s daughter who does so. By the time I am done, there will be no way to roll back the tide; no way to make the people unlearn their letters, or keep them from airing their grievances in pamphlets and broadsheets.
This is my gift to the papacy and all others who would rule by fiat. May they choke on it.
Blood lives.
And blood remembers.
Copyright © 2013 Alec Austin
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Alec Austin’s fascination with heresies and schisms grew out of reading Borges, and elements of “Blood Remembers” were inspired by the Albigensian Crusade. He’s a game designer, media scholar, and an alumnus of the Clarion West and Viable Paradise writing workshops. In addition to BCS, Alec’s fiction has appeared in Apex, Daily Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons, and he has stories forthcoming in Analog and On Spec.
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COVER ART
“Marching Off,” by Maciej Wojtala
Maciej Wojtala is a Polish concept artist who works in the video games industry. For the last seven years, he has been working at People Can Fly, the studio responsible for Bulletstorm and Gears of War : Judgment. He creates environment concept art, prop designs, illustrations, and graphic design elements. View more of his artwork at www.wojtala.com.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2013 Firkin Press
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