Vespertine

by Margaret Rogerson

  Murmurs of enlightenment spread as onlookers began to recognize the shape. I imagined the news fanning outward from the nearest bystanders like ripples in a pond, distorted to rumor by the time it lapped against the farthest corners of the square.

  I hoped this wasn’t going to end up on a tapestry one day: “Saint Artemisia beseeching the Lady for aid with her own heart’s blood.” Or worse—they had better not believe She was revealing the symbols to me like the saints of old, etched across my mind in sacred fire. At least now I understood why I had never read accounts of Old Magic being used in the War of Martyrs. If I checked again, I suspected I would see references to it everywhere, described as the Lady’s miracles.

  The revenant only glanced up once, bringing Charles and Marguerite into view. I hadn’t explained my plan to either of them. There hadn’t been time. Charles signed himself when he saw me looking. Marguerite wore a slight frown.

  As the revenant finished drawing the rune, I expected a change to happen, that I would feel the Old Magic’s poison seeping through my soul, or the terrible abandonment of the Lady casting me from Her sight. But I only felt slightly drained, as though a small amount of my life force had left my body along with my blood. The revenant sat up slowly, mindful of my spinning head.

  As I sat there dazed, a clopping of hooves penetrated the fog. Mounted on his own black charger, Captain Enguerrand had returned with a horse—and not just any horse. Seeing the dapple–gray stallion approach, the revenant wordlessly surrendered control.

  Heedless of the many onlookers, I stumbled to Priestbane and caught his bridle for balance. His hot breath gusted down my front as he nosed at my face, his whiskers tickling my cheek. He didn’t seem to blame me for how hard I had ridden him after the battle. I bent to run my hands down his powerful legs, wanting to check them for signs of heat or swelling.

  “He’s sound. He’s a good horse,” Enguerrand added, a little roughly. I felt him watching me. “Can you ride?”

  I wondered if I looked bad enough that he needed to ask. Before he could offer to help, I pulled myself into the saddle. I had just gotten settled when a warm, soft weight pressed against my back. Charles had boosted Marguerite up after me.

  “If you’re going to be cutting up your arm and bleeding all over the place, I’m coming with you,” she said fiercely. “Don’t argue.”

  I wasn’t about to push her off, at least not with this many people watching. I supposed she wouldn’t slow me down—Priestbane had been bred to bear a fully grown man in armor. Marguerite’s extra weight wouldn’t tax him on an easy ride.

  The revenant was saying, “We should start at the northwest corner of the city and draw the second rune, then work our way around. The walls would be the best place to start; they’re guaranteed to be among the oldest parts of Bonsaint.”

  I relayed this to Captain Enguerrand, who turned his horse to guide us, though he glanced at the patch of blood on my sleeve in concern. Priestbane impatiently mouthed the bit as our pace broke into a trot, then a canter, hoofbeats clattering loudly through the square. Marguerite yelped and clutched at my cloak until I grabbed her hands and wrapped them around my middle.

  As we reached the streets, windows and doors began to open. Faces peered out, at first cautiously, and then with growing excitement. Light flushed the buildings as the sun rose higher, cresting the rooftops. Color returned to the festival banners still strung overhead.

  The occasional voice calling out from a window failed to explain the hubbub at our heels. A glance over my shoulder revealed that the crowd from the square had decided to follow, the nearest people jogging to keep up, the slower trailing behind.

  They accompanied us all the way to the next stop, a rugged stretch of wall shining with moisture and thrumming with the roar of the Sevre’s current. I made the cut on my arm, then passed over control to the revenant. When it looked up from drawing the second rune, I discovered that the crowd had filled the street, gaining in size as those walking at the rear began to catch up.

  Onward we went. After the third rune, the Old Magic’s dizzy, draining weakness lingered instead of subsiding. After the fourth, my thoughts swam. I was grateful for Marguerite behind me; otherwise I might have slid from the saddle like a sack of grain. If it weren’t for the urgency of our mission, I suspected that the revenant would make me stop and rest, and probably eat some pottage.

  Our journey gained a dreamlike quality. My fear of running out of time lifted away, replaced by a peaceful numbness. The people of Roischal carried me forward as though I were borne along by a tide. At one point I thought I saw Elaine beside me; I wasn’t sure whether I had imagined it. Charles was there, then Jean. Another time, white petals began to rain softly over the street. I stared in bewilderment, wondering if it had started snowing, until I grew aware that onlookers were leaning from the upper windows of their houses, tossing down handfuls of Lady’s tears.

  It seemed that no one expected me to speak or even acknowledge them, unified with purpose merely by my presence. I distantly recalled the icon of Saint Agnes, carried during the procession beneath her fringe.

  At the next stop, dozens of hands were waiting to gently draw me down from Priestbane’s saddle—touches that in my exhaustion, I didn’t mind. For a surreal moment, I thought they belonged to the Lady. And perhaps, in a way, they did. I thought of Enguerrand handing me his water skin after the battle. The children in the encampment offering me their scrap of bread.

  I wanted to tell the revenant, You see, here is the Lady’s grace. It has been here all along. She has shown me Her grace in a drink of water when I was thirsty and bread when I was hungry and a bed when I was tired, not through miracles, but through the kindness of those who stood to gain nothing from helping me. It is through the hands of strangers that She has carried out Her will. But I was too weary and muddle-headed to form the words aloud. By the time I had strung them together in my head, I was already being helped back onto Priestbane’s saddle.

  This time, to my relief, the revenant didn’t relinquish control. It was good not to have to move my heavy body—to simply hand over my burdens to a friend. I watched it hold out my arm, which Marguerite was wrapping in bandages she had stripped from her chemise.

  “Just one more,” it said through my mouth, addressing Captain Enguerrand. “Let’s head to the convent next.” Then it muttered to me alone, “Stay awake, nun. They’re going to need you before this is over.”

  Time seemed to fold in on itself. It was as though I nodded off for an instant, and then we had entered a familiar section of the city, the convent’s mossy walls approaching. I braced myself to endure the scourge of the lichgate, but as we approached its iron bars, no rebukes came. A solitary voice ghosted over me, whispering softly, “My name is Sister Anna. I pray to the goddess, though my bones are long dust. Still I pray, forever.”

  Dismounted, I was led stumbling across the grounds. Marguerite held me up on one side, and Charles the other. The revenant was beginning to have difficulty controlling my body.

  Beneath their worried chatter, it gasped, “I didn’t predict how much of your strength this ritual would require. No one’s ever attempted Old Magic on this scale before, except…”

  It trailed off. Except for the Raven King, I finished numbly.

  As though to banish that thought, it raised my head and called hoarsely to Captain Enguerrand, “The chapel. The final symbol needs to be drawn on the chapel’s foundations.”

  Behind us, a scattering of screams erupted. The crowd began to flow inside more rapidly. A sister quickly scaled a ladder leaning against the wall. Looking out, she shouted down, “There are thralls coming! Knights, in armor! And”—she faltered, her face turning pale—“the confessor.”

  The nuns scrambled into action. The lichgate began to close on the heels of the last civilians streaming inside. The crowd had kept pace with us at the end, but the convent couldn’t possibly hold everyone. I hoped the rest had fled, even though deep down I knew it did
n’t matter—that on this side of the lichgate or the other, there was no escape from Sarathiel.

  We were passing the barnyard now. I heard a wrench of metal behind us, and realized we wouldn’t reach the chapel before the thralls breached the gate. I tried to speak, and experienced a brief moment of panic before the revenant caught on. I stumbled as the weight of my body returned.

  “I need to get the shackles off,” I panted.

  Over my head, Charles and Marguerite exchanged looks of dread. I knew what they were thinking. They had heard from Enguerrand that removing the shackles was impossible.

  Then a heavy clinking sound drew everyone’s attention. Jean was returning from the stable, carrying a chisel and mallet taken from the convent’s small smithy, where repairs could be made to horseshoes and the wheels of the corpse-wagons. Large as the mallet was, it resembled a toy in his enormous hands.

  No person has the strength, Master Olivar had said. But I wagered that he had never met Jean.

  As he advanced, Charles caught Marguerite’s eye. “He can do it,” he insisted. “I’d bet my life on it.”

  Marguerite’s lips parted, but no reply came. Her eyes were on the chisel. She was probably thinking that a single miscalculated swing could sever my wrist. She still hadn’t let go.

  “Let him,” I said.

  That broke the spell. They helped me to the ground. Jean set the chisel against the shackle on my left wrist. When the mallet struck, the impact reverberated through my body, humming along my bones as though my arm were the clapper inside a bell. The shackle parted, split cleanly in two.

  He repositioned the chisel. Raised the mallet again. A crack, and the right shackle broke, falling away from my wrist. Power roared into my veins like a healing draught, like a river of cleansing fire. Suddenly, I found that I could stand.

  A strange double vision overtook me as my eyes fell on the knights invading the convent through the breached lichgate. I felt as though I were back in Naimes, except this time, instead of watching helplessly from afar, I could stop it. I could make it so that the thralls never took another step, never raised their swords. I could do anything.

  I stretched out my hand. The knights collapsed like toppled toys, the wraiths that had possessed them streaming violently from their bodies. Another wave of knights followed, and they fell in turn. The effort barely registered. I no longer felt human. I was a vessel, forged to bear the revenant’s power.

  The sister watching from the ladder gave a strangled cry. She clambered down, stumbling as she fled. A moment later, mist seeped over the wall, pouring down its side in a silvery curtain. At its touch, the ivy curled and browned; a sparrow dropped dead from the withered leaves. More mist crept through the open space where the gate had stood, reaching its fingers into the convent. Within, barely visible, strode a tall, black-robed figure.

  On the battlefield, I hadn’t dared unleash the revenant’s full power near the soldiers and refugees. The same risk had held me back in the square. But now I had no choice. I had wielded the revenant’s ghost-fire before in my own convent—perhaps I could control it again here.

  “Revenant,” I said, “attend me.”

  I had almost forgotten how it felt. The triumphant howl of power unleashed, the spreading of a great pair of fiery wings. My cloak and hair seemed to lift around me, weightless. Flames roared forth, tumbling over the convent’s grounds. The mist evaporated in their path. The confused, roiling wraiths vanished like stars smothered behind a spreading cloud. I felt a distant twinge of regret at their loss, but it quickly faded to nothing before the towering onslaught of my hunger. The fire spread onward to engulf the city, racing through the streets, sweeping over rooftops, flooding into every window and alley and cellar.

  Everywhere, souls flared to life. I could map the city by their glittering multitude alone—the rats skittering through the walls, the constellations of insects clotted around the foundations of buildings; the families huddled fearfully inside their homes, wrapped in each other’s arms. But it was Sarathiel who glowed the most brightly, its brilliant light condensed into the shape of a man like molten silver poured into a mold. With distant, starved amazement, I realized that I could see the priest’s soul, too—glimmers of gold drowning in Sarathiel’s light.

  I needed to destroy Sarathiel. This much I remembered through the consuming haze of hunger. But I couldn’t devour its essence without consuming everything else—every living thing in Bonsaint, down to the worms in the graves and the weeds poking up between the cobbles.

  And why not? I no longer remembered why I cared. The world was radiant. My thoughts were silver fire.

  “Artemisia,” pled a girl’s fearful voice at my side, but I dismissed her as a mere annoyance. Once, I remembered, I had wanted to kill her. I wasn’t sure why I had changed my mind.

  Then I felt a waver of uncertainty. A part of me had wanted to kill her—but there was another side of me that hadn’t. And that same side thought that I shouldn’t give in to the hunger. That I should restrain myself. But if I wanted to destroy Sarathiel…

  The golden glimmers of the priest’s soul caught my attention. They were shining more brightly, spreading in patches, overtaking the silver. His body doubled over; he buried his head in his hands. Now he was more gold than silver, Sarathiel’s essence pulsing furiously at the intrusion. I realized what was happening. Against all odds, the priest was resisting.

  I doubted he could keep it up for long, but at the very least, he might delay Sarathiel.

  And then I remembered—the ritual. I had to finish the ritual.

  The fire snuffed out. The howling inside my head vanished. The coppery tang of blood filled my mouth and nose, and my clothes were faintly steaming.

  The sisters were staring at me with their mouths open. Without the Sight, the civilians hadn’t seen what had happened, but they were staring too. They had clearly sensed something, whether it was a shiver down their spines or the hairs rising on the backs of their necks—a force greater than life and death sweeping through them and sparing them all.

  Marguerite’s hands caught at me. She and Charles and Enguerrand were speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear them. “Go,” the revenant snarled, its voice miserable with hunger, “hurry,” and then I was being bundled toward the chapel, helped along by more people than I could count.

  The doors juddered open. A familiar smell of old wood, beeswax, and incense enfolded me, so unexpected that my eyes stung. It smelled exactly like the chapel in Naimes.

  I blindly reached for the knife as we careened up the aisle, and found it in my hand. As soon as I had made the cut on my arm, already falling to the floor, the revenant seized control and tore the carpet before the altar aside to expose the flagstones.

  The final rune began to take shape, scrawled clumsily in red. My fingers cramped. Frustrated, the revenant flexed my hand as though willing it to work. It could strengthen my body, but it couldn’t help my scars.

  At the periphery of my vision, I saw the sisters fail to close the chapel’s door. Leander had appeared, holding it open, his arms braced wide, his white-streaked hair hanging disheveled, blood shining on his upper lip.

  It wasn’t Leander—it was Sarathiel.

  It understood what we were doing at once. Fury and terror twisted Leander’s face into a horrible mask. It moved to withdraw, but at the same time one of Leander’s hands seized the doorframe. For an instant, he had regained control, and that was all it took for him to wrench himself inside.

  He dropped to his knees as though in supplication. “Artemisia,” he whispered, his green eyes burning into mine. “Do it.”

  The rune was finished. I slammed my hand down, or the revenant did, or we both did it together.

  The world exploded into pain.

  At first, the pain came as a shock. Then it made terrible sense. Stupid. I had been so stupid. I remembered the revenant’s earlier hesitation in the stall—the moment it had realized that the ritual designed to destroy Sarathiel wo
uld also destroy itself, that there was no way to avoid this fate, that it had made the decision to sacrifice itself then and there. Not for humanity’s sake, but for mine. Sarathiel wouldn’t have let me live. This was the only way to save me.

  Leander lay collapsed in the aisle, his features beautiful and still. He didn’t seem to be breathing. Fragments of silver were tearing upward from his body like shards of broken glass, a shattered cathedral window caught in a whirlwind, the fractured panes reflecting a skeletal ribcage, a serene half-closed eye, a graceful row of pinions. Sarathiel was breaking apart—and I could feel my revenant following.

  Frantically, I imagined gathering up its pieces and gripping them in my hands, clutching them against my chest, refusing to let them escape.

  “Let go,” said the revenant. Its voice was a horrible shriek, almost unrecognizable, like a gale tearing through my mind.

  Instead, I gripped it tighter.

  “You’ll die!” it howled.

  Desperately, I held on.

  And then the revenant was railing against me, too. The pain was so great that I could barely think. I briefly forgot my mission, only to remember again with an agony like being torn asunder. Furiously, I began to pray.

  Lady, if I have served You, spare the revenant. If You are merciful, let it live. I have done what You have asked. I have suffered for You. This is the only thing I want in return.

  Spare the revenant.

  Please, spare the revenant…

  My vision filled with silver light. No answer came. But She couldn’t ignore me forever. If She wouldn’t listen to me, I would make Her regret it.

  I would die, and I would see Her soon.

  EPILOGUE

  I had strange dreams.

  I was a child again, shoving my hands into the hearth. But this time the fire was silver and didn’t burn me. The flames were standing still.