A Season of Rendings

by Adam J Nicolai

  The faces loomed in his memory, enormous and alien: the girl with grey eyes, the girl with green eyes, the bald man, the red-haired man, the brown-skinned man. Useless. What did they smell like?

  Like fear and anxiety. Pulse-rot. Companionship. Love. A heady mix, unique to his pack. He darted around the hallway corner, sniffing and finding nothing, then another hall, then another. His tiny heart quivered in his chest, pouring out the energy he needed to keep going, but as he finished the last hall and turned back toward the first he still hadn't smelled or heard them. They're not here. Sadness, loneliness. Where could they be?

  Then came the thunder. The stones trembled beneath his paws; the walls shook. Boom-boom-boom-boom, a staccato rhythm that reeked of alarm. His heart leapt into triple speed, screaming at him to run, run now, alarm, panic, RUN.

  And again, somehow, he held the line. Fought to remember that he didn't have to simply obey his instincts, that he could, instead, think and plan.

  "HE'S GONE!"

  The thunder roared, screaming two syllables that he shouldn't have been able to understand but somehow could. They know I'm missing. They found my empty cell.

  No! Run! Squeak! Alarm, panic, NOW, NOW, NOW!

  And he gave in for a dozen heartbeats, letting his paws haul him back to the beginning, to the looming door, where somewhere in the mists above him the tall-walker fumbled at the metal lump protruding from its midsection.

  Doorknob. That's a doorknob.

  The door swung open. The guard shouted his alarm.

  And Iggy scampered through, sniffing for freedom.

  iv. Lyseira

  Akir. Please. Father, help us.

  The prayer had gone stale, but she kept repeating it anyway: a never-ending litany of pleas. She could feel His flames lurking just beyond her sight, just out of her reach, but He didn't answer.

  Why didn't He answer?

  He'd left her to fester in her own waste, hanging from the wall naked and defenseless. Helix hung opposite her, his eyes searching hers in the dimness, but neither could offer anything to the other.

  The hours mounted in a growing heap of stagnant pain: her broken fingers, her broken knees, the aching cry of her disjointed shoulders. Maybe Marcus would just leave them here forever; maybe they would starve like this.

  And then? she wondered.

  She didn't fear death. She never had. On the morning of Syntal's first Storm, when she'd been just a little girl, she had experienced her first and deepest test of faith. She had truly feared the world was ending, and she had stayed strong.

  Nothing since then had made her faith in Akir waver. Not the corruption in the Church. Not His refusal to answer her every prayer. She'd been hurt, certainly. She had feared and cried, raged and begged.

  Always, though, she had believed. Death, should it come now, would simply be a way to finally receive her answers.

  Eventually, the door groaned open. Bishop Marcus stepped through, with Galen Wick just behind him. Helix moaned bitter accusations from behind his gag.

  But Lyseira was relieved to finally see them. Kill me, she thought, and let me meet my Father.

  Marcus had changed since last autumn. He had the same raptor's eyes, the same severe jawline. But every time she'd seen him before, he'd been calm. Controlled.

  Now, he was angry.

  He stalked over to Helix, tore the gag from his mouth, and demanded, "Where is your cousin?"

  Helix winced and stammered. His voice, when it came, was a pale rasp. "I thought you got her."

  "We had her. She spoke a word and vanished. Where did she go?"

  Helix croaked a laugh. "Way to go, coz."

  "We have her books," Galen Wick put in. "We can figure it out."

  "Then what . . ." He coughed, grimacing at the pain it cost him. " . . . are you asking me for?"

  Marcus fumed, his eyes churning—then calmed. Like a mask had slammed over his face, he became, once again, the man Lyseira remembered.

  He turned and yanked the gag from her mouth as if issuing a dare.

  "Al'Akir above," she wheezed through her pain, "who is Father and Guardian, Savior and Punisher . . ."

  Marcus recognized the invocation and held his tongue, the whisper of a smirk on his lips.

  " . . . bringer of all things righteous," she continued, "I beseech Thee to hear my mortal voice."

  Once. She only asked that the formal invocation work for her one time. This time.

  It didn't. The fire remained out of her reach, taunting her. She finished anyway, refusing to give Marcus the satisfaction of seeing her fail: "I am coming soon. Please accept me, your humble servant, when I arrive."

  Marcus let her finish. Then he said, "You think I've come here to kill you? The girl who could never perform a miracle, who betrayed me in the Valley, who finally embraced witchcraft like so many other failed initiates? The Grey Girl?"

  He watched the horror spread on her face without reacting.

  "Yes, I know that was you. Every death in Red Quarter is on your head. They'd never have Cleansed it if you hadn't come. Your manna was a poison pill. It killed everyone who tasted it. You think I would allow you death for that? It wouldn't be nearly enough.

  "No. You will be Cleansed, girl. You will undergo torment such as you've never endured and can't even imagine. In the end, you will remember your loyalty to the Fatherlord and swear off your witchcraft. You will revisit the Red Quarter—what remains of it—and publicly denounce all your previous acts and sins. You will do the same here, in Keswick, where the Prince has managed to stir up some small amount of resentment for the Church, and you will do it all by choice.

  "Then, if you still wish it, you may end your own life."

  The blandness of this promise, the matter-of-fact way he delivered it, shook her. "That will never happen," she said, but it sounded less like a snarl of defiance and more—to her horror—like a question.

  "And why is that? You're too strong, is that it? Unlike all that have come before, you are special. You are unbreakable. Do you know how many have claimed the same before you?"

  "Not me," she said. "I'm weak." Every night of fevered prayer, every hour of service to The Abbot had prepared her for this moment. "Akir is my strength."

  Now that it had come, she relished it: this final opportunity to stand firm in the face of his onslaught, to die with a firm grip on her faith. And he would kill her, despite his threats. She would see to it.

  "You think God will save you?"

  "No. Not save me. Just give me strength."

  "Why not?"

  The question tripped her. It wasn't what she had expected.

  "Why not save you," he pressed, "if you are truly His child, whom He loves so dearly? You just called to Him. I heard you. And yet you're still here."

  "I didn't ask Him to save me."

  "Yes, you did." He tapped her head. "In here. He knows all things, does He not? He knows your heart. He knows how scared you are. And yet He leaves you here, wretched, and grants me the power to do this." He prayed, a twisting procession of slick, dark syllables, and pressed his hand to her bare chest.

  Her flesh sizzled, and she screamed.

  He pulled his hand away, leaving a raw welt between her breasts. The rancid stink of rotten meat curled into her nostrils. "He answers me. Why doesn't He answer you?"

  How many times had she asked that same question? How many times had she demanded an answer to it from the empty sky? It was the tip of a spear, aimed squarely at the fault point of her faith. It hurt more than his burning palm, than the broken ruins of her knees.

  Her head sank. She couldn't look at him. She fumbled for a response, any response. "He has . . . His own reasons . . ."

  "His own reasons for ignoring your torment? For telling you to feed the poor people of Red Quarter, and telling us to murder them?" He grabbed her hair, yanked her head up. "We are enemies, you and I. Yet He provides for us both. Why?"

  She fumbled after her beliefs, the faith that had been so st
rong only a moment before. She'd had so many insights. She had heard His voice. But here, in this hellish pit, all her reasons for believing suddenly felt like a house of twigs. Fragile.

  Still, she clung to them. "I don't know."

  "And that doesn't bother you?"

  "I . . . I don't . . ."

  "It should. It should bother you deeply. It should make you question everything you are. Everything you've done or ever will do. Because there are only two possible answers." He stared into her, his eyes brimming with hate. "One is that He simply doesn't care. He answers prayers blindly, or worse, relishes watching us fight with them. He tells you what you want to hear and tells me what I want to hear, grants whatever miracles will further our conflict the most, and laughs as we kill each other."

  No. I don't believe that.

  "The other is that He's not real."

  Despite her pain, despite everything, this struck her as so ridiculous that she laughed. "You know He is."

  "Do I?" Finally he let her hair go, but she kept her head up, watching him. "This morning I told your nog friend that many of the witches I capture don't even know how their sorcery works. They don't understand that it requires the use of their voice, of their hands." He paused, thinking. "There's always more to learn, of course. The girl taught me that sometimes, the hands aren't needed—but even the spell she used to escape still required her voice." He turned back to Lyseira. "Has it occurred to you that our 'miracleworking' functions the exact same way?"

  "No, it doesn't." Again, she clung reflexively to her faith. "I don't need a book. I don't need to study a chant. I just pray."

  "I see. And if you can't? If your voice is stifled, as He stifled yours last night?"

  She remembered reaching for the fire, remembered the wracking terror as she realized she couldn't give her prayer voice. The impenetrable silence had stopped her.

  Marcus went on: "Your hands move when you pray, too—did you know that? It feels like an act of worship, like something incidental to the miracle, just as it does for chanters. But it's not. If you are bound—or your hands are broken—your prayers, again, go unanswered."

  In Tal'aden, when she'd been bound, she'd been helpless—just as she was helpless now, just as she had been last night.

  "Why? Again, your God should know your mind, shouldn't He? Is He so weak that He has to hear you? That you have to dance for Him before He'll save you?"

  But I don't always speak. I don't always move. What about her prayer in the alleyway, the first time she'd called manna? Or Keldale, when she'd walked through the flames?

  Alone, she answered herself. I was alone both times. She could have spoken or gestured without realizing it, just as Marcus said.

  "A chanter draws on the 'Pulse.' Her power is elementary. You call on God. Your power is divine.

  "Yet isn't it strange that both of you can be neutralized simply by cutting out your tongues?"

  She sagged, her mind reeling. I don't need all the answers, she tried to tell herself. Some answers are for God alone. And yet here she was, just as Marcus said, at his mercy. Her pleas to Akir falling on deaf ears. Was it really just because she couldn't move her fingers? How could it possibly be something that stupid?

  "Lyseira," Helix rasped. "Don't listen to him."

  Helix, of all people, who had suffered more at Marcus's hand than any of them. Telling her not to give up.

  But He let the Church do this. He let them take us in the night. He let them slaughter everyone I loved in Red.

  No. She had felt Him cry. They had wept together, when He saved their lives in the Waste.

  Or that was just me. Imagining a voice, because I needed it. Imagining that He cared, and working a spell of my own, no different than anything Syntal's ever done.

  A wet, gasping sob ripped out of her. Marcus smiled.

  "Lyseira!" Helix shouted. "He's full of sehk, he's just trying to break you down!"

  "When I met you in Southlight, I knew you were a smart one. I could tell from the moment you came through the door that greatness lay ahead for you. It still does. You need only recant."

  "No," she snarled. She might not have the answers, but she wouldn't give him that.

  "You prefer to endure all the suffering I can bring? To let me bring you to the brink of death, pray to Akir for your restored health, and do it all again the next morning? To watch, day after day, as Akir watches me torture you into madness?"

  She couldn't answer.

  He took her chin and shoved back, slapping her skull against the stone. "Recant."

  Again, that automatic revulsion, that refusal to do what he wanted. Her serenity may have vanished, the bulwark of her faith turned to mud beneath her feet—but she still despised him. She would never let him win so easily.

  She spat on him.

  He winced and wiped his cheek. Then he nodded to Galen, who stepped outside. He returned with an iron poker, its tip glowing like a glimpse of Hel. His eyes betrayed the slightest hesitation before he handed it to the Bishop.

  Marcus pressed it into her belly button.

  She screamed, wracked with agony. "When you're ready, just tell me," he said. "We'll stop when you want to stop."

  "Lyseira!" Helix shouted, straining—but he couldn't fight his chains, because his knees were broken.

  Galen started toward him, and Marcus stopped him. "Let him scream," he said.

  He raked the poker across Lyseira's belly as she writhed and screeched, until the letter W glowed in her flesh. "I will heal you in the morning," he said. "I wasn't lying about that. But these marks will leave a scar." He drew the poker straight down, forming the letter I. "Everyone will know what you are when I've finished. Even you."

  "Akir, please!" she wailed. "Akir, help me, God, I've done everything for You!"

  The poker bit again. "Yes, Akir," Marcus said. "If what I'm doing is wrong, stop me. Send me a sign." He finished the T and waited. The stench of burning flesh enveloped her. She gagged, her body heaving in the chains, triggering answering shrieks of pain from her savaged shoulders, her ruined knees.

  "Lyseira!" Helix screamed again, his cries melding into her own pleas to her God, her own cacophony of horror. "No, you sehking animal! You sehking freak!"

  "Quiet," Galen told him, "or it'll go worse for you."

  "I hear nothing," Marcus went on. "Do you?" He looked upward, spread his hands. "Al'Akir above," he intoned, "who is Father and Guardian, Savior and Punisher, bringer of all things righteous, I beseech Thee to hear my mortal voice.

  "Is this Your daughter before me? Is she precious to You? She claims You love her. Will You intercede on her behalf?"

  "I'll kill you!" Helix shrieked. "You sehking monster, I'll sehking kill you!"

  "Hm." Marcus shrugged. "No response."

  "Seth!" she screamed. "Seth! Help!"

  "Ah, good! A real person. That's an improvement. But I assure you, he's as powerless as your God." He drove the poker deeper this time, gouging out great, smoldering chunks of her in the shape of a C.

  Helix roared and thrashed. "I'll kill you! I'll kill you!" Galen blanched and stepped away from him, shaking his head.

  Marcus sighed and turned to Helix. "Is this troubling you? Is it more than you can stand? You should be watching very carefully, Helix Smith. There will be a demand of you, as well, and you should be aware of the consequences should you deny it."

  "Leave her alone!" Helix screamed back. "Just leave her—you sehking monster!"

  "Too painful for you to watch, perhaps. I can remedy that. You don't have to watch it at all."

  He crossed the room, and burned out Helix's eyes.

  29

  i. Melakai

  "He's late," Isaic said.

  Outside the windows of Green Tom's shed, evening shadows already crept into the palace garden. The shed had been a perfect place to meet—outside of the palace proper, secluded, but still on the grounds. A place open to the Crownwardens that Marcus was unlikely to visit. Yes, Kai thought. Perfec
t.

  If the bastard had bothered to show.

  "I apologize, Your Highness. He promised me he'd be here an hour ago."

  "It would seem he lied to you."

  "So it would."

  It was the third time Isaic had complained. Yet the Prince still hadn't left.

  "If you wish to leave, I'll be sure to give him a piece of my mind after I find him."

  Isaic grunted noncommittally. Best not press it, Kai thought. He's a big boy. He knows where the door is. As for Kai, he would wait as long as his prince did. He was the one who'd dragged him into this, after all.

  Finally, through the eastern window, he caught a pair of shadows making their way toward the shed. His heart jumped. Then he remembered he was expecting four people, not two.

  Kids, probably. Sneaking out to the shed to have a bit of fun. But one of them was armored, and the other had a limp. Not kids, then. Harth had come alone.

  Something had gone wrong.

  They reached the shed and knocked twice; three times; once more. Harad let them in.

  "He was late," Cort whispered to Kai. "I brought him as soon as he showed."

  Kai shooed them inside. In the flicker of the small room's single candle, he could just make out a smattering of dried cuts on Harth's face.

  "What happened to you?" he demanded once the door was closed.

  "Jumped out of a second story window," Harth said.

  "Where are the others?" Isaic asked. Then, to Kai: "You said there would be three."

  "Marcus has them," Harth said. "All of them."

  A stunned silence. Kai searched for words—any words—and realized the danger. "Did they know of this meeting when he took them?"

  "No," Harth said, "or I wouldn't have come."

  Isaic punched the wall. "Damn it! How did he―?" He clipped the words off, jaw grinding. "Then there's nothing else to discuss. They're dead." He glared at Harth. "Why did you even come here? You should've run."

  "Maybe I should have. I almost did." Harth's voice trembled. "You're the Prince?"

  Kai's hackles rose. Suddenly, he suspected a trick. "This meeting's over. Cort, bring him back where you found him."