The Heretic

by Joseph Nassise

  But it was the signet ring on his left hand that drew Cade’s attention.

  A ring with a skeletal snake chasing its own tail surrounding the number nine.

  Known as the Ouroboros, the snake symbolized many things in many cultures: the circular nature of life, the cyclical power of the universe, the idea that all things are renewed through entropy and decay.

  He had no idea what the nine represented, but at least he now understood why Winston had been focused on the number.

  Cade knew that he was looking at his first concrete clue to the attackers’ identities.

  Assuming that the dead man had been the sorcerer who had summoned the ghostly fog, it seemed logical to guess that his death had banished the creatures back to their own realm of existence.

  Around them, Barnes’s men were hard at work collecting the bodies of the dead, both those that had perished at the hands of the Enemy and those that had risen again only to be sent on to their final rest by their fellow Knights. It was a gruesome sight, one that filled Cade with unease, for he knew that he could have been investigating another deserted commandery if Barnes’s troops had not succeeded in repelling the assault. The thought prompted a question.

  Turning back to the major, Cade asked, “Any idea what their objective was?”

  “We’re not entirely certain. As near as I can tell, the attack was a diversion, designed to hide whatever it was that they were doing in the cemetery. We found a block and tackle set up over a grave, but we haven’t had time to look into it further yet.”

  “Show me,” said Cade.

  Barnes led them across the property and into the cemetery. It was a large one, with graves dating back more than one hundred years, yet the one they finally stopped at was no more than a few months old. The inscription read simply JULIUS SPENCER. The coffin had been dug out of the grave and its lid torn open, but the body of the former Knight remained resting peacefully inside. The aforementioned block and tackle lay discarded in the grass a few feet away. Unlike the scene at Templeton, with its many desecrated graves, here only this particular one had been disturbed.

  As Riley questioned the locals for more details, Cade stepped away from the others and used his Sight to survey the scene around him

  With it he could see that the graveyard existed in the Beyond, just as it did here, but that was where the similarity ended. In the real world, the graveyard was a well-manicured place of respect and remembrance. In the Beyond, it was a wild, desolate locale.

  The grass was overgrown, knee high in most places, obscuring many of the gravestones. The stones themselves were cracked and worn, the writing on their surfaces obscured by overgrowths of fungi and mold. The trees, in the real world lush and healthy, were disease-ridden hulks in the Beyond, their leafless branches stretching down almost to the ground, their skeletal forms stark against the grey sky. Off to his left, the brooding form of the manor house stood watch in the distance.

  A flicker of motion caught his eye.

  When he turned to find it, he saw a shadowy figure standing out among the gravestones. Before he could get a good look, the figure moved off, disappearing from view among the markers.

  He suspected he knew the spirit’s identity, however.

  Later, he would verify that suspicion.

  It was time they found some answers to this puzzle.

  14

  After ordering his men to get some rest, Cade retired to his room, ostensibly to do the same. In truth, the knight commander had much different plans.

  Once inside, he closed his bedroom door but left it unlocked. Moving into the bathroom, he took the mirror down off the wall and returned with it to the bedroom, placing it flat on the floor next to the bed. He took a pad of paper out of the desk, wrote a short note to Riley explaining what he intended to do, and placed the note prominently on his pillow.

  He left both of his guns in his kit bag; firearms didn’t work in the Beyond. While he didn’t exactly understand why, he had come to the conclusion it had something to do with the fact that the spiritual nature of the place didn’t mesh well with the mechanical nature of the gun itself. This seemed to be supported by the fact that melee weapons, powered only by the strength and determination of the wielder, worked without a problem. In fact, the more emotional the attacker, the more damage the blow inflicted.

  Cade knelt on the prie-dieu that stood in the corner of his room and took a few moments to prepare himself mentally for his journey across the barrier. Reaching the other side was always a difficult and draining task. Without a clear head, he could end up getting lost or not having the strength to make the return journey.

  The Beyond was still very much a mystery to Cade, despite his many journeys there. As nearly as he could tell, it was a shadow realm that existed close to the real world in time and space, but forever separated by a wall of energy he had come to call the barrier. Like the mystical Purgatory, it was inhabited by the shades of the dead, those that for one reason or another had not moved on to a lasting rest. Other creatures inhabited the Beyond as well; dark, twisted creatures that hunted the shades and roamed the land in great predatory packs. For lack of a better name, Cade called them spectres, after the mythical creatures of legend. He avoided them wherever and whenever he could.

  The spirit he’d seen in the cemetery was most likely Spencer’s. It had been too distinct to have been from anyone but the recently dead. The fact that it remained in the area around Spencer’s grave told Cade that he would probably find the former Templar close by on the other side of the barrier. Cade intended to make the crossing with the hope of contacting Spencer’s shade and finding out just what made him so interesting to the opposition.

  Cade strapped his sword across his back in its habitual carry position and moved to the other side of the bed.

  Without further delay, he stepped through the surface of the mirror.

  The squad members were assigned to guest rooms in the east wing of the house, identical to Cade’s. The rooms were small, with a minimum of furnishings; a narrow bed, a desk and chair, and a kneeler in the corner for prayer time. A small bathroom, containing a toilet, sink, and mirror, was connected to each room.

  The events of the last twenty-four hours had worn Malone out, and he intended to get some rest while he had the chance. Rack time was a sparse commodity in Cade’s unit, and who knew when they would be called out again? He placed his computer equipment on the nearby desk and hung his gun off the edge of the headboard, where it would be within easy reach.

  As a final preparation before sleeping, Malone stripped the pillow case from the pillow and took it into the bathroom. There he took the mirror down off the wall, placed it inside the pillow case, and then remounted the mirror facing backward. He smiled at the thought of the rumors that would fly if they left them that way and the locals found all of the mirrors in the rooms used by Echo Team covered up in such a fashion, but he knew it wouldn’t happen. The team was very cautious about protecting their commander’s secrets.

  Malone turned out the lights, stretched out on the bed, and tried to get some sleep.

  Unfortunately, sleep remained elusive.

  He’d reached that stage of being so overtired that his mind refused to shut down. It was still working at the problem of whom or what they were facing, and worrying the issue like a dog with a bone. Some research might be just what he needed.

  He brought his laptop over to the bed and fired it up. As he’d expected, the room itself did not contain any ports with which to plug into the Order’s servers; those were reserved for the library and research areas, to better to monitor what individual Knights were doing online. But that hadn’t hampered his net-based activities in quite some time. It’s amazing what a little knowledge and a properly configured wireless network card can do.

  Five minutes later he was clandestinely disguised as an authorized net spider and roaming through the Order’s personnel records. He started with the name on the grave they’d visited earlier.
<
br />   It didn’t take him long to find Spencer’s records. He went through the man’s personal history, noting his middle-class background and advanced education. He’d spent time in the armed forces before being recruited to join the Order.

  Malone next turned his attention to the list of duty assignments, looking for anything out of place, anything unusual that might have caused the attackers to single out Spencer’s grave from all the others in the cemetery.

  One notation in particular caught his eye.

  Malone stared at it, thinking, then he got up, left his room, and walked down the hallway past several doors until he came to the room to which Riley had been assigned. He knocked softly on the door.

  No answer.

  He knocked again, louder this time. When still he received no response, he calmly began pounding on the door as hard as he could. He kept it up until he heard the snap of the lock on the other side.

  Riley partially opened the door and stared out at Nick.

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand, Malone?“ the big man asked.

  Nick ignored him. “You spent time at the Birmingham commandery before joining Echo, didn’t you?”

  Riley continued to stare. “This can’t wait until morning?”

  “No. Answer the question.”

  Sighing, Riley said, “Yeah. Three years. It was hot and humid, and that was the best part of the assignment.”

  Nick headed back toward his own room. “Come here and check this out. I think we’ve got a problem.”

  Riley disappeared back inside his room, then emerged again a few moments later, fully dressed. He strode down the hall to Nick’s room and peered over his shoulder as he brought up Spencer’s personnel records. The man’s service record and photograph appeared on the screen.

  “Recognize him?”

  Riley took a good, long look. “No. Should I?”

  “Yes.” Malone frowned. “You both supposedly served in Birmingham at the same time.” Riley had a near-photographic memory for faces and names. According to the records, Spencer had served five years at the Birmingham commandery. During that time the two men would have had to have run into each other at some point. Even if they were assigned to opposite shifts of duty, they would have seen each other while off duty or during worship times. The commandery in Birmingham just wasn’t that big.

  Malone dug a little deeper into the records.

  The landscape of the Beyond was constantly shifting, like a fun house mirror, hauntingly familiar yet intimately strange. Sometimes it was vastly different from where he had entered the rift; other times it was as alike as a photograph and its negative.

  Tonight it was the latter.

  The commandery in which he emerged was a mirror reflection of the one he had just left, though with one major difference. Here the inevitable passage of entropy was clearly visible; like a canvas painted with depression and pain, everything was hung with a patina of decay. Dark stains covered walls that seeped a foul-smelling sweat, while thick cobwebs and layers of dust hid the ceiling from view. Great gaping holes littered the floor of the hallway. Through them he could see the floor below and. in one notable case, all the way to the basement deep beneath the house.

  He cautiously descended the stairs, expecting them to collapse beneath him at any moment, and was finally able to reach the ground floor without mishap after several slow, agonizing minutes. From there he quickly made his way to the front door and out into the night.

  He set off across the lawn, moving toward the graveyard on the far edge of the estate, just as he had earlier in the day. Where in the real world the grass was vibrantly green, here it was limp and lifeless. And like everything else in the Beyond, it was one of a thousand subtle shades of grey. Great burrow-like holes littered the area, displaying tunnels that disappeared into the dank earth below, tunnels that seemed to devour even the scant light cast by the feeble stars above.

  Cade didn’t like their looks and made wide, sweeping detours to avoid them.

  It was a long walk, longer than he remembered and therefore suspect in the constantly shifting landscape, though at last he came to the cemetery. The waist-high gate of iron that guarded the entrance in the real world had been torn down, but here in the Beyond it still hung on its rusted frame.

  Cade moved through the gate onto the cemetery grounds.

  In the living world the grave markers were carefully tended; here, many of them were split in two. Their top halves lay discarded and forgotten in the uncut grass, their bottom portions caked with strange growths and odd lichens that obscured the inscriptions. The sickly light of a waning moon cast shadows across the scene, shadows that seemed to weave and dance around him.

  A sudden motion out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Reacting on instinct, Cade spun to his left.

  The blade that should have severed his arm at the shoulder merely Nicked his skin as he turned. A dark, barely glimpsed figure dashed past him and disappeared behind a nearby mausoleum.

  Cade called after the departing figure. “I mean you no harm.” He spoke in Latin, the universal language of the Order. Despite his statement, he drew his sword, so he would be ready to defend himself if and where necessary. There was no telling how the other would react to his intrusion into the Beyond. His reception had been less than welcome by other denizens of the place.

  Cade moved closer to Spencer’s grave. Twice more he was attacked. Twice more he managed to twist out of the way of the deadly weapon at the last moment. Still, he did not attempt to attack the other man in turn. He suspected the shade was Spencer, and he needed his cooperation, not his animosity.

  He was also beginning to believe that the man’s attacks were nothing more than a test, a challenge to his worthiness. Each time the other man had him dead to rights, yet Cade had managed to elude the killing blow.

  With a confidence born of this new consideration, Cade moved toward the figure waiting for him by the grave, a figure with a naked longsword visible in its right hand.

  Cade stopped several feet away. He replaced his own sword in its sheath and let his hands fall to his side with his palms open, clearly showing his lack of hostile intent.

  The two men studied each other.

  Cade waited, enduring the inspection.

  The silence stretched.

  Finally, the other spoke.

  “Why have you come here?”

  The man’s voice was soft but carried the hard tones of command quite clearly across the distance that separated them.

  “I need your help.”

  The figure stared. “The living are not welcome here.”

  Cade ignored the implied threat. “The Order is under assault. I need to understand who is behind the attacks and what they are after. I believe you can give me the answers I need.”

  The former Knight turned away. “I cannot help you.”

  “You must!” Cade demanded. “Our brothers are dying. Our dead are being ripped from their graves, forced to walk the earth. You know who is behind this. You must help us.” His shout echoed across the desolate landscape.

  The shade continued to walk away.

  “By your Vow, by your pledge to the Lord, I demand that you honor my request. Let each, as well as he can, bear another’s burdens, so that one may honor another.”

  “Do not quote the Rule to me!” the dead Knight answered angrily, spinning around to face Cade again. “You do not know what it is like to wander this place. You don’t know the unrest, the yearning for finality that I have endured since coming here. You do not know the horrors that I have seen! After my faithful service, I am reduced to this? You should bear my burdens.”

  But Cade would not be deterred. “If my taking your place could save the lives of those in my care, then I would be the first to volunteer. But I don’t have that option. If not for the Order, then do it for your brother soldiers, those who fought and died in the name of the cause as earnestly as you did. They believed. They gave their lives w
illingly. Don’t let their sacrifices be in vain. Don’t let their rest be shattered in the way that your own has. With your help I can stop this, I know I can.”

  For a moment, Cade thought he had failed. The dead Templar raised his weapon, his face contorted in anger. Cade braced himself for the battle to come, but something in his earnest plea must have finally reached the other man for the blow Cade anticipated never came. The former Templar slowly lowered his weapon and nodded in defeat.

  “Very well, I will help you. But you will not like what you will hear.”

  The man’s soft, quiet statement only heightened Cade’s curiosity.

  15

  “This is interesting,” Malone said, pointing to a particular line on the screen.

  “A training assignment? We all have those. So what?”

  “One that lasted two years?”

  Riley frowned and looked closer at the screen. “Two years? That doesn’t make any sense.” Both men knew that such assignments rarely, if ever, lasted more than six months. If you couldn’t cut it in your new unit in that time frame, you were transferred elsewhere. “Is there any more information?”

  When Malone tried to access the detailed information, he struck a command prompt that asked for a user ID and password. He plugged in his standard codes, fully expecting to gain access, only to be bumped back out again with an error message that informed him that the information he was trying to reach was classified.

  “What the…?” Malone thought for a moment, then inserted a second set of codes.

  The classified warning blinked back at them from the screen for a second time.

  “Try mine.” When that, too, failed to work, Riley said, “So much for that.”