The Blood Knight

by Greg Keyes

  “Yah,” Ehan said.

  Stephen approached the corpses for a better look.

  Five were men, and three women, of various ages. The youngest was a girl who could hardly have been more than sixteen, the oldest a man of perhaps sixty winters. They were all naked, and each seemed to have died by strangulation. But they all had other wounds: backs flayed nearly to the bone, burns and abrasions.

  “More sacrifices?” Brother Themes offered.

  “If so, they aren’t like the ones I saw before, at the fanes,” Stephen said. “Those had been eviscerated and nailed to posts around the sedos. I don’t see a sedos fane here, and these people look as if they were simply tortured, then hanged.”

  He thought he ought to feel sick, but instead he felt oddly giddy. It was an irrational reaction, he supposed, brought on by the horrible sight.

  “There are certain old gods and even saints who take their sacrifices hung on trees,” he continued. “And it was common even in Church lands to hang criminals like this, at least up until a few years ago.”

  “Maybe that’s why the boy didn’t mention it,” Themes suggested. “Maybe this is just where his town brings its criminals.”

  “Probably,” Stephen agreed. “That makes sense.”

  But despite the logic, the creak of the ropes swaying in the wind and the eyeless faces were still very much with Stephen a few bells later, when Demsted came into view.

  To Stephen’s eye, most of the towns he had seen since leaving the ruins of Ever hadn’t been what he considered proper towns, and he didn’t expect much out of Demsted. He was, however, pleasantly surprised when they came down through the fog and were greeted by a myriad of lights in the glen below. In the twilight he could make out the outline of a clock tower, the peaked roofs of at least a few houses that boasted more than one story, and a squat cylinder that might be an old keep.

  The entire town was encircled by a stout stone wall. It was no Ralegh or Eslen, but considering where they were, Stephen was nothing short of amazed. How could a handful of sheep herders support a town of this size?

  The mountain way joined an older, embanked road shortly before they reached the town. Another surprise: It resembled the sort of road the Hegemony had built, though as far as Stephen knew, the Hegemony hadn’t expanded all the way into the Bairghs.

  They soon found themselves at the city gate, a pair of iron-bound wooden portals about four kingsyards high. They weren’t closed yet, but a hoarse shout from above warned them to halt. Or at least Stephen supposed it was a warning.

  “We’re travelers,” Stephen shouted up. “Do you speak the king’s tongue or Almannish?”

  “I can speak the king’s tongue,” the man shouted back down. “You’re out awfully late. We were about to close the gates.”

  “We might have camped in the mountains, but we met a boy who told us we could find lodging here.”

  “What was the boy’s name?”

  “Ven, he called himself.”

  “Je,” the man said reflectively. “Do you swear you’re not warlocks, wirjawalvs, or other creatures of mischief or evil?”

  “We’re monks of Saint Decmanus,” Ehan called up, “or three of us are. The fourth is our friend and a huntsman.”

  “If you’ll allow the test, you can come in, then.”

  “Test?”

  “Step on through the gate.”

  The gate didn’t open directly into the town but into a walled-in yard. Even as they entered it, Stephen watched the opposite gates close. He waited for those they had just passed through to shut as well, but apparently if Stephen and his companions were warlocks or wirjawalvs, the townsfolk would just as soon leave one door open for them to exit through.

  A door opened to their left, at the base of the wall, and the hairs on Stephen’s neck pricked up as two large four-legged shapes stepped out, their eyes glinting red in the torchlight. He couldn’t tell if they were dogs or wolves, but they were something from that clan and big.

  It was a moment before he noticed that there was someone with the beasts. Whoever it was wore a weather cloak and a paida like his, and his face was in shadow.

  The beasts were coming closer now, growling, and Stephen reckoned they were some sort of mastiff, albeit the size of a pony.

  “This don’t make me feel easy,” Henne said.

  “Just hold still,” said the person with the dogs. Stephen thought it sounded like a woman, though the voice was a bit husky. “Make no sudden move.”

  Stephen tried to obey, but it wasn’t easy when the huge, wet toothy muzzles of the animals were snuffling against him.

  “This is the test?” he asked to try to curb his nervousness.

  “Any dog can scent what isn’t natural,” the woman said. “But these have been bred for it.”

  The dog sniffing Stephen suddenly bellowed out a bark, bared its teeth, and backed away, the hair on its back standing visibly.

  “You’re tainted,” she said.

  “Yes,” Stephen said. “We ran across something back in the Midenlands. A woorm. We may have its scent on us still.”

  His hearing was only now approaching normal; he had yet to recover—if he ever would—the saint-touched ability to hear a whisper a hundred kingsyards away. But he didn’t need to have such hearing to imagine the creak of bows bending all around them. As the woman backed away, though, the dogs quickly quieted down, and she seemed to relax a bit. He heard her whisper something to them, and the beasts came back for a second smell. This time they seemed content.

  Clearly these people made a habit of testing strangers to make certain they weren’t monsters; that meant either that they had good practical reasons for doing so or that they were hopelessly mired in primitive superstition.

  Stephen wasn’t sure which he preferred.

  “They’re tainted,” the woman said loudly, “but they’re Mannish, not monsters.”

  “Good enough,” the voice from the wall responded.

  Stephen imagined the wood of bows relaxing, and he felt his shoulders loosen a bit.

  “My name is Stephen Darige,” he said to the woman. “Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

  The hood lifted a bit, but Stephen still couldn’t make out any features.

  “A humble servant of the saints,” she said. “I am called Pale.”

  “Sor Pales?”

  She chuckled. “Pro suveiss nomniss…”

  “…sverruns patenest,” he finished. “What coven did you attend?”

  “The Coven Saint Cer of Tero Gallé,” she replied. “And you made your studies at d’Ef?”

  “Indeed,” Stephen replied cautiously.

  “May I ask if you are on the business of the Church? Were you sent to aid the sacritor?”

  Stephen didn’t know how to answer that except with the truth.

  “We’re on a mission for our fratrex,” he admitted, “but we’re just passing through your town. I don’t know your sacritor.”

  His words were followed by a long, odd silence.

  “You mentioned Ven,” the woman said at last.

  “Yes. He said his uncle would give us a room at, ah, svartboch.”

  “You would rather stay at an inn than at the church, where you would be lodged without fee?”

  “I’ve no wish to impose on the sacritor,” Stephen replied. “And we’ll leave with the dawn. Our fratrex has provided us with funds sufficient for the journey.”

  “Nonsense,” a male voice interrupted. “We have room for you in plenty.”

  Stephen glanced toward the new voice and found himself regarding a knight in brass-chased armor. His helm was off, and in the wan torchlight his face was mostly beard.

  “Sister Pale, you really should know better. You should have insisted.”

  “It was my intention to, Sir Elden,” Sister Pale replied.

  Sir Elden made a small bow. “Welcome, good brothers, to the attish of Ing Fear and the town of Demsted. I am Sir Elden of Saint Nod, and it would
be my great honor to escort you to your secure beds.”

  Though he desperately wanted to, Stephen could think of no possible way to refuse.

  “That’s very kind,” he said.

  The streets of Demsted were narrow, dark, cluttered, and mostly empty. Stephen caught a few curious souls peering at them from darkened windows, but for the most part the town was eerily still.

  The single exception was a sprawling building from which the sound of pipes and harp skirled, along with clapping and singing. A lantern hung on a peg outside the door identified it—as Stephen imagined—as the svartboch.

  “You’d not want to stay there,” Sir Elden offered, contradicting Stephen’s tacit wish. “It’s no place for men of the saints.”

  “I’m happy to take your word for it,” Stephen lied.

  “Very sensible,” Sir Elden said. “You’ll find the temple much more to your taste. Demsted itself can be quite a trial.”

  “I was surprised to find a town of this size in such a remote place,” Stephen said.

  “I don’t find this to be a town of much size,” the knight said, “but I suppose I know what you mean. They mine silver in the hills north of here, and Demsted is the market where merchants buy the ore. The Kae River starts here, as well, and flows into the lower reaches of the Welph, and thence to the Warlock. If you came from the south, over the pass, it’s easy to understand your surprise at finding anything at all.”

  “Ah. And how long have you been here, Sir Elden?”

  “The space of a month, not more. I came with the sacritor to do the work of the resacaratum.”

  “In this remote place?”

  “The worst infections fester in the places most difficult to reach,” the knight replied. “We have discovered heretics and shinecrafters in plenty. You may have seen some of them on the tree in the pass.”

  For an instant Stephen was so startled that he couldn’t reply.

  “I did,” he said finally. “I thought them criminals.”

  It was too dark to make out Sir Elden’s face, but his tone suggested that he had heard something in Stephen’s comment he didn’t care for.

  “They were criminals, Brother, of the very worst sort.”

  “Of course,” Stephen said carefully.

  “These mountains are fairly crawling with the get of shinecraft,” the knight went on. “Foul beasts conjured from beneath the earth. I myself witnessed a woman give birth to a most hideous utin, proving that she had had intercourse with unclean demons.”

  “You saw this?”

  “Oh, yes. Well, the birth, not the intercourse, but the one is reasoned from the other. These lands are under siege by the armies of evil. What, did you think Sister Pale’s inspection of you was spurious? The first nineday I was here, a wirjawalv entered the town, murdered four citizens, and injured three more.” He paused. “Ah, here we are.”

  “I should like to hear more of these things,” Stephen said. “We must travel farther into the mountains. If there are dangers we may encounter there…”

  “There are dangers in plenty,” the knight assured him. “What business takes you into this heathen land? What fratrex sent you hence?”

  “My mission must remain confidential, I fear,” Stephen replied. “But I wonder, is there a collection of scrifti and maps to be found in Demsted?”

  “There are some,” the knight replied. “I myself have not examined them, but I’m certain the sacritor will allow you to see them once you’ve satisfied him as to your need and the authenticity of your claim. Meanwhile, come, let us stable your horses and see you to your lodging. I’ll fetch the sacritor, and you can become acquainted.”

  It was too dark to make out much of the temple from the outside; it was bigger than Stephen thought it might be, with a domed nave in the style of the Hegemony. He wondered briefly if it might actually be that old, if some forgotten mission had pushed farther into the mountains than the histories knew.

  But as Sir Elden had pointed out, though Demsted was remote, it wasn’t isolated. And if its church was really that ancient, one of the many sacritors or monks who had lived there would have noticed and made note of the fact.

  The knight opened the door, and they entered. The marble floor was worn to polished, and the paths where feet were used to tread actually were slightly channeled, heightening Stephen’s impression of great age.

  But the architecture wasn’t that of the Hegemony, at least no temple of the Hegemony he had ever seen, whether depicted or manifest. The doorways were high, arched, and narrow, and the columns that held the high ceilings oddly delicate. Instead of the usual hemispheric dome, the central nave seemed to have a steep cone, though the flickering candles and torches that lit the altar and the prayer niches weren’t sufficient to illuminate the upper reaches of it.

  More than anything, he realized, the building reminded him of the few sketches he had seen of the audacious construction from the era of the Warlock Wars.

  They went beyond the nave into a quiet corridor lit by only a few candles, though the stone still was so polished that it shone like glass, making the most of the light. Then they passed through a door into a comfortable room that Stephen quickly recognized as a scriftorium. Behind a heavy table, a man sat hunched over an open book, an Aenan lamp brightening the pages but not his face.

  “Sacritor?” Sir Elden ventured.

  The man glanced up, and the focused light of the lamp grazed his face, revealing middle-aged features lengthened by a small beard. Stephen’s heart suddenly picked up a few beats, and he had the sudden understanding of what the wolf feels when the trap closes on its foot.

  “Ah,” the man said. “How good to see you, Brother Stephen.”

  For an instant he’d hoped to be wrong, hoped the face was a trick of light and memory. But the voice was unmistakable.

  “Praifec Hespero,” Stephen said. “What a surprise.”

  LEOFF REMEMBERED blood spattering on the stone floor, each drop like a garnet until it struck the slightly porous rock, where it soaked and spread, jewels transformed into stains.

  He remembered wondering how long his blood would be part of the stone, if he had in some sense become immortal by spilling his life there. If so, it was a humble sort of immortality, a common one, judging by the quantity of stains already there.

  He blinked and rubbed his eyes with the knobbed backs of his wrists, torn oddly between a fit of rage and utter exhaustion as he watched splashes of ink soak into the parchment, so like blood on stone. He seemed to vibrate between the two moments: then, the lash across his back, the exotic pain so total that it was difficult to recognize, and now, ink spraying from his shivering quill.

  For a long instant the difference between then and now collapsed, and he wondered if he was still there, in the dungeon. Perhaps the now was just a pretty illusion his mind had created to help him die more easily.

  If so, his illusions were of poor quality. He couldn’t actually hold a quill, but he’d had Mery tie one to his hand. At first his arm had cramped quickly and agonizingly, but that was only a fraction of the pain he was enduring.

  To write music, he had to hear it, and doing that in his mind had always been his great gift. He could close his eyes and imagine each note of fifty instruments, weaving counterpoint, insinuating harmony. Everything he wrote he heard first, and that had never been anything but a joy to him—until now.

  A wave of nausea swept through him. He rose jerkily from his stool and stumbled to the narrow casement of the window. His belly crawled as if it were full of maggots, and his bones felt as rotten as termite-infested branches.

  Could it kill him merely to imagine these chords? But if that was the case…

  Speculation was swept aside as he leaned out of the window to retch. He had eaten hardly any supper, but his body didn’t care. When his belly was empty, it reached deeper, convulsing him until his legs and arms gave way, and he crumpled until his face was against stone.

  He imagined himself as a
drop of blood, a garnet becoming a stain…

  He wasn’t sure how long it was before he found the strength to stand again. He pulled himself back up to the window, heaving in great gulps of the salty air. The moon had risen, cold and round, and the freezing air numbed his face. Far below, silver lapped against ebony in little wavelets, and Leoff suddenly yearned to join them, to free himself through the window, break his ruined skeleton on the rocks, and leave the lands of fate to those who were stronger and braver. To those who were well.

  He closed his eyes, wondering if he was mad. Certainly, if he had never been tortured, broken, humiliated as he had been, he would never in his wildest dreams be able to imagine the music that so sickened him now. He knew that viscerally.

  The obscure notation in the book he’d found would have remained as incomprehensible as the script in which it was written. It was related to no system of music he knew, but once he’d seen that first chord, he’d somehow heard it in his head, and the rest of it fell into place. But a sane man—a man who had not experienced the horror he had—could never have heard that chord. He certainly could never have gone on, never purposefully hurt himself the way he was doing now. Anyone who loved his life, who imagined a future, could never write this music.

  His dreams for his music had been grandiose; his dreams for himself had never been particularly ambitious. A wife to love him, children, evenings singing together, grandchildren in a comfortable house, and old age coming on kindly, a long, pleasant, comfortable reflection before life’s end. That was all he’d asked.

  And he would have none of it.

  No, any such hopes for himself were dead, but there was his music. Yes, he might still accomplish something if he was willing to destroy himself. And there was so little left to destroy, it was almost a pleasure.

  No fall to the rocks for him. Back to the paper and ink.

  He’d just begun the next progression when he heard a light knock at his door. He stared at it blankly for a moment, struggling to remember the significance of the sound. He was sure he should know; it was like a word almost remembered, stuck at the bottom of the throat.