The fey woke, scrubbing at bleary eyes or emerging from the trunks of hollow trees with wide yawns. Delini let them wake and turned to Salim and Neila.
“They’ll be ready,” he said. “Leave that to me. Now what’s this plan of yours?”
As it turned out, Salim’s plan was remarkably simple. Now that the Pharasmins were undoubtedly alerted to their escape, they wouldn’t find the priests nearly as complacent. The temple would be heavily guarded, and likely by warriors who knew what they were doing. There would be magical wards and alarms. All of which meant that it would be much more difficult to slip in undetected.
“That’s where your fey come in,” Salim said. “If you can give me a repeat performance of your little firebombing of Anvanory Manor, there’ll be such chaos that the priests won’t be able to focus on anything but the immediate threat. While you’re attacking from one side, I—” he faltered as he saw Neila’s expression, “I mean we can slip in through the back. Once we’re in, we find wherever they’ve stashed my sword, locate Khoyar and the soul-ring, and finish this. Remember, you’re not trying to take the cathedral, just keep them occupied until you see us signal our success. Then you get out of there before you lose any more people. Understood?”
Delini nodded, but Neila was looking at Salim strangely.
“A decent plan,” she said, “but why would we waste time looking for your sword, instead of going straight for Khoyar?”
Salim opened his mouth to respond, then stopped. The honest truth was that it had never occurred to him that they might not locate his sword first. His sword—which in one of his more poetic moments he had named the Melted Blade—was the only thing he still retained from his old life in Rahadoum. The first time he had used the goddesses’ magic, it was to protect him from flame, and afterward he had held the basket hilt of that sword in a mountainside forge until the brass of the hilt ran like wax around his fingers, obscuring the markings that identified it as an officer’s sword of the Pure Legion. But the way Neila was looking at him made him uncomfortable. He floundered for words and came away with nothing.
“It’s important,” he said, feeling foolish.
“Important enough to risk our lives? To risk finding Khoyar before he destroys my father’s soul?” Her voice was gentle, but underneath the velvet was stone.
Salim wanted to say yes, of course it was. His sword had been with him longer than she could imagine—had been his right hand in the hunt before her father had been a damp patch in her grandmother’s nightclothes. But instead he slowly nodded his head. She smiled without malice.
“When?” Delini asked.
Salim lifted his head and looked around the clearing. For all their drunken stupor, the fey were moving with purpose, quickly and efficiently.
“Soon,” he said. “Very soon.”
∗∗∗
They were ready by early evening. Most of the day had gone to preparations, larger fey brewing the flammable pitch missiles that had been so effective in setting portions of the manor house ablaze, while smaller fairies fluttered and sprinted through the forest, gathering troops and spreading information. At one point Neila strong-armed one of the satyrs, a one-horned old goat named Eschus, into leading them back out to where the ox cart was still concealed at the forest’s edge.
Olar had been waiting, dozing on the driver’s bench, and stood anxiously when they arrived. The man was adamant about participating when Neila explained the plan, but was eventually convinced that it was more important for him to remain at the manor, to keep an eye on things and not raise undue suspicion. At last he had acquiesced, turning the cart and whipping the bulls hard for home, but not before pulling a long, thin bundle from beneath his perch and handing it to Salim.
Salim pulled apart the loose sacking and hefted the sword. It was heavy, longer than Neila’s and double-edged, made for hacking through armor rather than the polite dueling of the nobility. “Where did you get this?” he asked.
Olar smiled. “One of the master’s many trophies. In the confusion of the fey attack, it went missing. Thought you might be able to use it.”
“Indeed.” Salim held it out at arm’s length, sighting down the blade, then took a tentative swing.
“Thank you, Olar,” Neila said. She reached forward and took the servant’s hand with both of her own. “For everything.”
The old man grinned again, surprised and a little embarrassed, then twitched the reins and set the cart in motion.
Now Salim and Neila crouched in their position, an alley due west of the cathedral. Down the crooked street and above the roof of the stocky shop that hid them from view, the three soaring spires of the church rose dark and foreboding against the evening sky. Next to Salim, Neila fidgeted nervously inside the drab shawl that hid her face and hair.
“Soon,” he whispered, and touched her arm. At their feet was the canvas sack that held both of their swords, concealed so as to avoid any possibility of suspicion.
For an instant, the old resentment rose. If he’d been alone, there’d be no need to reassure anyone, no one to watch out for once the fighting started, or to become a liability in a pinch. No one to become collateral damage if things went poorly.
Yet that wasn’t fair, and even in the anxious pre-battle stillness, Salim couldn’t quite make himself believe it. The girl had proven herself as well as any legionnaire—more, if he wanted to be fair. She’d saved his life in the markets of Axis, and held herself together in the face of some of the strangest things a mortal could bear witness to. She was smart, she was fast, and she was stubborn—all things which he knew could be said about him, in his better moments. And if it made him uneasy to take her into combat, to see that delicate skin go before the sword, then that was his problem, his weakness. The girl had earned her place. He squeezed her arm again, and she stopped shuffling and smiled up at him.
A new light, as bright as the sun but from the wrong direction, suddenly flared into being over one of the cathedral’s towers. Brilliant white, the cloud of ghostly orbs whirled and swarmed through each other like fist-sized fireflies, leaving golden comet-tails behind them. From east of the church, a howling clamor rose.
“That’s it. Come on.” Salim shook out the sack and handed Neila the slim sword they’d taken from the guardsman, buckling Olar’s heavier weapon around his own waist. The weight was off, tugging hard against his hip without a counterbalance, but comforting nonetheless. He took hold of Neila’s shoulders.
“Ready?”
She nodded.
Tensing his arms, Salim opened himself to the goddess.
The sick thing was that it got easier every time, his disgust carrying the uncomfortable knowledge that, given time, he might even grow to like it. As it was, it was all Salim could do to keep his hands steady as he let Pharasma’s filth—death magic and birth magic, the slick of placenta and musk of the grave—slide through him, into him. He called, not with words but with his need, and the Lady of Graves answered.
Neila disappeared. Only the sensation of flesh under his hands and the girl’s soft gasp of surprise gave lie to the illusion. She shifted, and he gripped harder.
“Don’t move,” he said. One of his hands crabbed awkwardly down an arm that wasn’t there until he found her hand, which he placed on his belt. “If we get separated, you won’t be able to find me. If there’s a fight, I’ll go visible, and you press yourself up against the nearest wall and stay there until I’m done or I ask for your help.” He put special emphasis on ask—he didn’t want her getting in the way or wasting such powerful magic unless absolutely necessary. “Otherwise, you keep hold of me. Understood?”
There was a pause, and he could imagine her nodding. Then, “Understood.”
“Good,” Salim said, then stopped stalling and let the goddess’s magic, which still writhed beneath his skin, finish what it had come to do.
There was a brief burst of light as his corneas became transparent, then adjusted to the new situation. Salim rarely used s
uch intense magic, and felt the momentary disorientation and nausea as his brain tried to process the absence of his arms and legs—all those parts that should be visible. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed, letting the vertigo settle. Invisibility was like fumbling in the dark—you couldn’t see where your hands and feet were, even out of your peripheral vision. You had to feel them, to trust your kinetic memory.
Neila tugged on his belt. “Salim?”
“I’m still here,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Together they moved out of the alley and ran across the wide street that split like a river around the cathedral, angling toward the window Salim had chosen earlier. From the other side of the temple, the shouts and screams had doubled and tripled, joined by the smashing of glass and the muffled reports of explosions. Salim could easily imagine the scene—fey bursting from hiding and flooding through the city streets in an angry mob, whooping and waving their blazing brands as they converged on the church. In the face of that yammering horde, who could be expected to worry about watching the back door?
With the goddess’s magic shielding them, the infiltrators didn’t bother scaling the low fence around the churchyard, instead passing straight through the little side gate and then running, silent and unseen, toward the target window. It was small compared to the massive stained-glass creations that were even now shattering under the fey’s onslaught, but it was open to allow the desert breeze access.
At its foot, Salim stretched up and poked his head inside. The long hallway was empty save for the echoes of panicked shouts and running footfalls, no doubt headed for the eastern side. He withdrew and used his hands to make a step for Neila, communicating its location by touch. Then he straightened, grabbed the sill, and muscled himself over the shoulder-high barrier, tumbling inside without a sound.
In the corridor, there was a moment of silent scrambling, and then his hands found Neila’s and placed them once more on the back of his belt. So far, so good. Keeping their shoulders to the wall in case someone came charging down the corridor, Salim moved quickly and instinctively, trusting to a lifetime—or several of them—of experience with Pharasma’s churches to give him the cathedral’s basic layout.
His instincts led them true. Within minutes they had passed into more populated chambers, moving slowly and carefully as all around them brothers and sisters in dark robes stampeded like frightened horses down the halls, attempting to secure the cathedral against a siege it had never been intended to weather. After all, what sort of maniacs attacked the clerics of birth and death? At one point the intruders passed an archway opening onto the main entry hall, where several monks strained to lift an enormous wooden bar into place, sealing the main doors. Salim turned right, leading them down a corridor they both recognized.
“Khoyar will go for height,” he had told Neila, as they waited in the alley, “the better to view the situation and direct his people. His chambers are in the tallest of the spires. That’s where he’ll be.”
It was a gamble. If Khoyar were a military man, he might think twice about such a position—exposed, isolated—and instead opt for something more central as his command post, trusting to sentries and runners to observe enemy movements. Yet Salim didn’t think Khoyar would do that. To do so would require trust—in his subordinates’ observations, and in their unsupervised presence in his quarters—as well as a certain understanding of his own vulnerability. Salim didn’t think the man had either. So he and Neila moved quickly through the church, angling for the now familiar spiral staircase.
And stopped short, reflexively pulling themselves up against the wall. There was a man on the staircase.
It was Hasam. The excitable little acolyte’s usual expression had been replaced by fear and a grim, if shaky, determination. He stood on the third stair up from the floor, a long spear held horizontally so that its ends almost touched the walls on either side, barring the way.
Salim swore softly. The stairway was wide enough for them to slip past without touching the man, but there was no way they could slip under or over the spear without brushing it or making some telltale noise. There was no help for it. He reached for his sword.
Neila’s hand covered his, stopping the draw. A voice in his ear whispered, “No. Let me.”
Salim resisted for a moment, then let his hand drop. Tugging softly at his belt, Neila led him smoothly forward, until they stood less than an arm’s length from the sweating priest.
“Hasam.”
The little man squeaked and thrust the spear forward, forcing Salim to leap backward to avoid being skewered. Neila stayed with him, moving them even closer to the bug-eyed priest.
“Hasam,” she said again, only the voice wasn’t hers. This one was husky, commanding. “Why do you work against my will, child?”
The priest goggled, head whipping from side to side in search of the speaker. He paused as the words sunk in, then breathed, “Goddess?”
“Khoyar has betrayed my faith, Hasam.” The voice was a rich purr. “He has led this church astray. And now his judgment has come.”
Hasam sank to his knees, the spear forgotten. On his wide-cheeked face was the rapturous terror unique to prophets and madmen. “My lady,” he whispered, “what would you have me do?”
Neila didn’t hesitate. “Do you serve faithfully, Hasam? Do you live in the shadow of the Spire, and seek judgment in your course?”
“Yes, yes!”
“Then go.” The voice was hard, final. “Leave here. Hide yourself away in the catacombs, among those who have passed beyond. When Khoyar’s judgment is complete, you will return and speak of my words. You will rise to lead this church, in faith.”
“Thank you, Goddess.” There were tears streaming down Hasam’s face, curving around the trembling smile. “Thank you.”
“Now go.”
Hasam went, fleeing down the staircase into the crypts, stumbling over his robes without bothering to lift them. In seconds he was gone, the sound of his gasps and careening trajectory receding into the ground.
“That was lucky,” Salim said. “He might have screamed for help.”
“No, he wouldn’t.” Neila’s voice was calm and back in its normal register. “What does any priest want more than divine revelation? And a little mandated self-aggrandizement doesn’t hurt.”
“True. Let’s just hope Pharasma doesn’t mind being impersonated.”
Her unseen figure, soft and lithe, pressed itself into his back.
“Who’s the one setting fire to her church?” she whispered, breath warm in his ear. “And since when do you care about upsetting the Lady of Graves?”
Salim grinned. He was really starting to like this girl. “What if he realizes he’s been tricked and tells someone?”
“Then we’ll have to move quickly, won’t we?” She grabbed his hand and began pulling him up the stairs.
They climbed. With only the small windows in the tower walls, Khoyar hadn’t bothered to set any more guards. Within minutes they were at the landing leading into the high priest’s chambers. Through the door, Salim could hear the voices of several people, mostly men.
He gripped Neila’s hand, and she gripped back in answer. Then he let it drop and drew his sword, using his free hand to test the door latch.
It was unlocked. He took one last breath, then let the door swing open, moving in and pulling the ghost of Neila along in his wake.
Khoyar was there, conversing heatedly with several other priests. Two Salim recognized by the stoles on their robes—a thin young woman a few years older than Neila, wearing the robes of the church’s high priest of birth, and an older man with thin gray hair and sad eyes whose embroidery identified him as the high priest of prophecy. In theory, both positions were of equal status to Khoyar’s as the high priest of death, but in Salim’s experience one priest often rose above the others to take charge, as Khoyar clearly had here. The two supposed peers stood in an unconsciously servile line on the window side of the room, flanked by two
men in the plain robes of rank-and-file priests, while Khoyar paced back and forth, haranguing them with sweeping hand gestures.
None of the five noticed the door open. Salim didn’t bother stopping to listen to Khoyar’s lecture. Instead he slipped silently around behind the high priest and embraced him, one arm curving around Khoyar’s stomach, the other bringing the blade of his sword to the man’s throat. He saw the other priests’ jaws drop open as the shroud of invisibility fell away.
“Hello, Khoyar.”
Salim had to give the man credit. The priest faltered for only a second, and when he moved it was without the slightest regard for the blade under his chin. Faster than Salim would have imagined, Khoyar dropped, jerking his head backward to avoid the sword and ducking violently out of Salim’s grasp. He threw himself sideways, away from both Salim and the group, and came up in a crouch. His hand shot out in Salim’s direction.
Only Salim’s reflexes saved him. While his mind was still marveling at the high priest’s response, instincts that had seen him through a hundred battles were already hurling him down and forward as the light in the room seemed to draw into Khoyar’s palm, coalescing around it in an almost physical sphere. At the priest’s shout, it exploded outward in a line of brilliant fire that stabbed over Salim’s right shoulder, barely missing his head. Salim felt the heat against his ear like a cattle brand and smelled burning hair.
Then he was within reach of Khoyar once more. Grabbing the still outstretched arm—the one meant to burn a hole through his chest—Salim let his momentum carry him slightly past the priest, twisting so that the arm locked out straight and backward. Then he lifted his sword arm up, bent it, and brought it down.
Khoyar screamed as his elbow shattered. His ruined arm went limp, now bent in a direction no god had ever intended. Unsatisfied, Salim swung around behind Khoyar a second time, not letting go of the man’s arm, feeling the bones grate against each other as he twisted the limb up and flat against the priest’s back. This time the sword that snaked around to Khoyar’s throat dug deep enough to draw a trickle of blood.
Death's Heretic Page 30
