Operation Arcana

by John Joseph Adams

  “Father—?” began Kan, but Kellur waved him to silence.

  The hag stopped outside the doors and gestured for them to enter. As they passed her, Kellur saw the pernicious smile that twisted her weathered face.

  He stopped. “Do you have something to say to me, old woman?”

  Her only reply was a chuckle. She held out her hand, indicating the room beyond. Kellur took a breath, then walked past her. Kan followed quickly, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  The room beyond those doors was vast. The walls and ceiling were lost in shadows, and the roof was supported by scores of ornate pillars. At the far end—seated like a queen on a throne—was a woman. She was as different from the withered crone as it was possible to be. Dressed in silks that were blood red and snow white, the woman was young and ripe and beautiful—easily the most beautiful woman Kellur had ever beheld. Her face was exquisite, heart-shaped and framed by masses of curling black hair. Her eyes were a vivid green, the green of summer sunlight on newly unfurled leaves. Her lips were as red as all the sin in the world. The silks she wore were translucent, and Kellur could see the womanly curves beneath, and the dark circles of her nipples on each full breast. She wore no jewelry except a dagger on a leather girdle, the handle slanting across her taut stomach, the tip pressed against the silks through which he could see the dark triangle of her pubic bush.

  He was instantly flushed with a desire to hold this woman. To kiss her. To tear away those silks and plunder those loins.

  And at the same moment he wanted to drop to his knees before her and worship her. As a queen. As a goddess. As a woman in the full richness of her power.

  He heard a sound, almost a cry, and turned to see Kan gazing at her with glazed eyes, his face twisted with lust and fear.

  The woman wore a knowing smile, clearly aware of the effect she had on men. On any man.

  “Welcome to my hall,” she said. “I am Celissa, eldest of the Red Sisterhood.”

  Eldest, thought Kellur. Surely an honorary title. This woman could not be older than two dozen winters.

  “What do I call you, Lady Celissa? Are you a queen?”

  “Lady Celissa will do. Anything more would be ungainly, Kellur Hendrakeson of Argolin, Champion of the Faithful, defender of the Gate.”

  Kan gasped, but Kellur bowed. “I am pleased that you know me, my lady. If you know this, then you must know of the danger that approaches.”

  “I know many things,” she admitted, “but many of my sisters do not look beyond our walls. Tell them what brings you here to our church.”

  “Sisters?” echoed Kan, but as Kellur and his son looked around they realized with cold horror that the shadows that filled the great room were not merely lightless air. Figures stood there, hunched and misshapen. Vaguely womanish, vaguely human. They stood as still as statues, many covered with robes and cowls, hands clasped to their bosoms, eyes as dark as those of the witch on the wall.

  “Father,” whispered Kan, “we have walked into a trap. These witches will drink our lives.”

  “Be silent, boy,” snapped Kellur. “We are guests in this house, and by Father Ar, you will respect . . .”

  He let his voice trail away, aware of the sharpening of attention from the watching figures. There was a hiss of conversation, but he could make out none of the words.

  Kellur cleared his throat. “Be quiet, boy.”

  He turned to face Lady Celissa. Her mouth still smiled, but there was heat behind her gaze. “You swear by a name that is never spoken in these halls,” she said in a voice that was softer than her eyes. “You come here to ask our help, and you stain the air with that name.”

  Kellur placed a hand over his heart and bowed low. After a moment Kan did so as well.

  “I spoke in haste and from habit, my lady,” said Kellur. “I am ashamed of my clumsiness and beg forgiveness.”

  “Forgiveness,” said Celissa slowly. “You ask much.”

  He said nothing.

  “Rise and face me, soldier of Argolin,” she said. “And you, too, child.”

  They stood, father and son, and looked up at this beautiful woman on the throne.

  “Tell us all what would make no less than a champion of your religion come to us, the Red Sisters.”

  Kellur took a breath, nodded, and gestured backward, indicating the world beyond this chamber and this church. “The Hakkians march on the Red Gate. They are already in the foothills of these mountains and in two or three days they will be here. Right here. They will burn everything in their way, my lady, and then they will lay siege to the Gate.”

  “Why should we care?” asked a voice from the shadows. It sounded like the woman from the wall, though he couldn’t really tell.

  “Do you not know the history of the Gate?” he asked. “This pass, this cleft in these mountains, was placed here by the grace of . . . of whatever god or goddess you believe rules this world. This mountain pass that has been fought over for six thousand years until the Red Gate was built.” He shook his head and once more gestured to the world outside, as if it could be seen through stone and shadows. “The Red Gate. Do you ever look beyond your walls? You never venture outside, as far as we know, so maybe you don’t care about the pass, the Gate, and everything beyond it. On the other side are fertile valleys on whose slopes and in whose plains grow the wheat and corn and apples and garlic that feed the people of half the world. Lose the Gate and lose the crops. Lose the Gate and starve fifty thousand people. Lose the Gate, lose the war. This is not complicated math, even for those who do not study war.”

  “The Gate is strong,” said another of the shadowy women.

  “Strong, yes,” admitted Kellur. “But it can fall. It has fallen. I know. I fought to hold this pass on three separate occasions.”

  It was true, and he told them of it. The first time had been when he was sixteen, the same age as Kan, barely able to hold a light straight-sword. Too small yet to hold anything with real heft. He’d staggered along through the valley to the Gate, groaning and sweating inside the furnace-hot weight of his father’s old armor. The metal was too heavy, the chainmail bit and burned him, and the helmet was a full size too big. And he’d gone to that fight carrying the added burden of knowing that he was only a body. Nothing more. Something to cram a narrow pass. Something to soak up arrows or weary the arms of the enemy soldiers. He was not expected to fight with any skill. He was not expected to kill a single one of the enemy. He was not expected to be anything more than obstructive meat that would slow the enemy so that they would be spent when they met the real soldiers.

  That Kellur did not die was more luck than skill. He’d picked up a dead soldier’s pike and an enemy lieutenant had fallen off his horse and landed on the tip of the blade. Perhaps the gods were having a grand old time messing with the lives and fates of their worshippers. The punch line of that cosmic joke was that the lieutenant was important. The son of a priest, and a man—though quite young—who everyone believed was graced by the God of War.

  To see him fall, speared by a boy, his blade unbloodied, his mettle untested, was a worse blow than anything a thousand soldiers with sword and spear could have accomplished. The heart went out of the enemy, and the Gate held.

  The second time was different.

  Kellur was a sergeant then. Older, bigger, in the heat of his twenties, with all of the boundless energy the young are granted by gods who are strangely generous at all the wrong times. Kellur had stood with a hundred other men, each of them village champions or veterans of the coastal wars. They’d each drawn lines across their chests above their hearts with a thrice-blessed dagger and then taken sips from a cup of commingled blood. They’d sung the old war songs that had lyrics whose meanings were lost to the ages. They’d locked shields and laughed as the enemy cavalry rode toward the Red Gate.

  Of the hundred blood-brothers, nine survived.

  Those nine spent the next four years as slaves to the invaders. The valley and the lands beyond? It took ten y
ears for them to recover even after the invaders were driven out.

  Then there was the third time.

  Kellur was forty then. Older, slower—jaded—but wise.

  That was the first time the Hakkians had come out of the east. Five thousand of them had come. Lightly armored but heavily armed, and they threw themselves against the Gate. Kellur was captain of the guard. He pitted his two thousand soldiers against their numbers, and after three days of wholesale slaughter, he took the head of the Hakkian captain. It had been a costly win, though, and both of his brothers and fourteen hundred of his men had gone to the Summerlands. If the Hakkians had been better prepared or had come in greater numbers, the Red Gate must surely have fallen.

  They tried it again, and again, each time with small armies that were nonetheless large enough to drain the resources of the defenders. Kellur, now elevated to general, took five thousand heads during the last battle, but it was at the cost of three thousand men. And the Gate itself was badly damaged from fire and battering ram. It had been hastily repaired, but the army was strained and weak. The new recruits came and enlisted by the thousand, but they were green. The Hakkians were a vast empire, and their soldiers were hardened from years of endless warfare and heartened by conquest everywhere but here.

  “Now,” he told the gathered witches, “the enemy comes again, and this time they are prepared. They’ve learned from their defeats. They do not send a few thousand lightly armored scouts against us, nor do they waste a legion of light cavalry. My spies have gone mad trying to count their numbers. They come up the mountain with a hundred thousand soldiers. An ocean of spears comes to take the Red Gate. And this time they bring more than rams and torches. This time they bring siege engines and mineral fire and all of their weapons of war. This time they come like an ocean, and the Red Gate will be swept away.”

  The hall was utterly silent.

  The lady on her throne regarded him with hooded eyes and a secret smile.

  “You talk of an inevitable defeat, Champion,” she said. “If this is already written in the book of fate, why come to us?”

  “Because, my lady,” said Kellur, “there is only one thing the Hakkians fear. There is only one enemy they will not dare to attack.”

  She raised an eyebrow, and the curve of her smile tilted upward. “And what is that?”

  Kellur said, “This cathedral stands outside the Gate, as it has stood for ten times ten thousand years.”

  She nodded.

  “No army has ever taken it,” he said, “because no army dares. Each time an army has come up the mountain road to assail the Red Gate, they march past this church. They do not look upon it. They do not speak as they pass. They will not speak of it. Any man who dares name it or even call attention to it is cut down by his own fellows lest that transgression offend those who live within these walls.”

  Celissa leaned ever so slightly forward. “And do you know why?”

  Kellur met her level stare. “I know, my lady. I know why this church is left untouched. I know why the churches in Hestria and Vale have also been passed by despite centuries of war and conquest.”

  Her eyes flicked to Kan and back. “Does your son know?”

  “He knows the rumors, the campfire talk. Like all of the children beyond the Gate he thinks that this is an abode of demons. You are the things he was taught by his nursemaid to fear when he would not eat his greens or do his chores. You are the monsters of our nighttime.”

  Celissa sighed and looked away. He caught an emotion on her face. Was it sadness? Annoyance? Some commingling of both? The other witches murmured and whispered.

  “And yet you come here, to this abode of demons.” It sounded like those words hurt her pretty mouth.

  “I do, and I come with humility.”

  “Why? If you know what we are, Champion, you know that we will not venture from our halls to fight your wars.”

  “I know that you won’t,” he agreed, “and I know that you can’t. Not the oldest of you, for the kiss of Mother Sun would turn you to dust.”

  They hissed at the mention of her name.

  “I know that you cannot abide the light. Only the youngest of you can endure it, but only for a day or a few days.”

  “A few days,” she said softly. “You do know us.”

  “I do.”

  “Once more I ask, why come to us? If the invaders will pass us by, and if we cannot come to your aid, then how is this anything but a wasted trip for you? And a dangerous one.”

  “My lady, when was the last time you heard from the Red Churches in Hestria and Vale? When was the last time your sisters there sent word to you here?”

  There was more whispering in the shadows, but Celissa held up her hand for silence. “If you ask that question, then you must know the answer. We have not heard from either church for seven moons. But that is not strange. Sometimes years will pass before word is shared between the churches. We expect them to send word to us before the solstice.”

  Kellur once more placed his hand over his heart. “I would not willingly cause you hurt, my lady, but I fear that you will never again hear from your sisters in those churches.”

  “And why is this? What makes you think you can speak for them?”

  Kellur opened the flap of the pouch tied to his belt. He removed a handful of ash and, kneeling, let it fall to the floor. It rained down like sand.

  “This is all that is left of the Red Sisters of Vale,” he said. Then he took a second handful of ash from a second pouch. “And these are the ashes of the Sisters of Hestria.”

  He knelt there, head bowed, hands wide, fingers and palms stained with ash.

  The witches screamed.

  They screamed and screamed so loud that Kellur and his son clapped their hands to their ears and cried out in pain. Even Lady Celissa screamed. Tears boiled from the corners of her eyes, and as she wept, her eyes changed from vivid green to a dark and terrible red. She rose from her throne and pointed an accusing finger at them.

  “What insanity is this? What lies are these? Do you want to die screaming? Do you want to see your son torn apart and consumed? I will eat your heart and—”

  She stopped, cutting off her own words as she staggered and darted out a hand to catch the arm of the throne. Sobs wracked her whole body, and in that moment it seemed to Kellur that she was not a young and beautiful woman, but a hag far older and more wrinkled than any of the other witches. Ancient beyond the counting of centuries. Everything—her youth and beauty—was nothing more than a glamour.

  Had this been another day, Kellur would have screamed and run from this place. He’d have run straight to the nearest shrine to Father Ar and begged the mercy and protection of his god.

  But this was not another day.

  “My lady,” he said. “I am sorry for your losses. On my life I am. But the blood of your sisters is not on my hands, nor on the hands of any of my kinfolk. The Hakkian armies laid siege to those churches and tore them down.”

  “They cannot have done this,” she snarled. “They fear us.”

  “They fear you, but they hate you more. And they know you. They know that you cannot abide the sunlight, and so they brought their siege engines to batter down the walls of the churches in Hestria and Vale. They brought those cathedrals down, and they burned the forests of Hestria to let the light in. They tore down the mountaintop of Vale to chase away the shadows. This they have done with their machines of war. And in the sunlight they hunted your sisters down and watched them burn.” He shook his head. “Were there none of them who were young enough to endure the sunlight? None who could stand and fight them?”

  Celissa wiped at her tears and shook her head. “No. Not in either church, and none here. The youngest of us is a thousand years old. We . . . we cannot step into the light. Not for a moment. Not even to kill. Not even to feed.”

  She put such hate into that last word that it seemed to burn in the air.

  She looked toward the doors, to the east.r />
  “They are coming here to do this to us?”

  “My lady,” he said, “they will do this. This time they will not pass you by. This time they won’t ignore this church as if it is nothing but a bad dream. This time they will tear down your walls and let the sun burn you. And then they will throw their weight against the Red Gate, and it, too, will fall. In a week the Hakkian flag will fly over the graves of both our peoples, and then we will be no more.”

  The murmuring around the room was like the hissing of a thousand snakes. Celissa sat down. Her glamour was back in place, but the face she wore was filled with grief.

  “Then the world we know is at an end. How funny to learn, after all these years, that immortality is not a passage into eternity. There would have been a poem about hubris there, but it will never now be written. The Hakkians have no art, no poetry. They are barbarians.”

  “They are human, my lady. They can bleed.”

  “But we cannot fight them, as you have so told us with such brutal clarity.”

  Kellur smiled. He could feel the way that smile cut his face. He knew that it was an ugly smile. Humorless, grim. Kan looked at him and then quickly looked away.

  “Why smile?” demanded Celissa. “Is this all some joke? Is that the purpose of your visit?”

  “It is not, my lady. It’s just that there is one thing we can do. There is one tactic we have not yet employed.”

  “What? Do you propose moving your army into our church? They would be killed when the walls fell, just as we will.”

  “No, my lady,” he said. “I have read all of the old books, and I have consulted our priests and mages. Before I dared come here I learned everything I could about the Red Sisters. This is how I know what I know.”

  “To what end?”

  He got to his feet and walked to the foot of the throne. As he came to a stop he jerked aside his scarf and bared his throat. “Take my blood.”

  She was so surprised that she laughed. The other witches chuckled.

  “Father!” cried Kan. “What are you doing?”

  “You came here to commit suicide?”