The conditions had most resigned to their fates. Any man leftover was old and crippled, and the women focused on keeping their children fed. But patches of the slums roared in protests, their chants filling the night air. Some thought this was all a ploy by the nobility to eradicate Dockside and ship them off.
They had to spare a large portion of Glass soldiers and former Shieldsmen to oversee the evacuation. South Corner and Dockside were shog holes, but the people were territorial—proud of their heritage. And the Shesaitju couldn’t be seen dealing with the inhabitants, lest Yarrington burn itself down and save Nesilia the trouble. Though, that was the plan, wasn’t it?
It was bad enough to have former enemies occupying the castle. Their assistance had to be contained to prepping the harbor itself.
“Sir Unger, my home, they took my home!” an enraged woman squealed from the markets, Docksider accent heavy on her lips.
Torsten lowered his head and shoved by. She grasped at his sleeve.
“Yer from there! Don’t let them take our homes.”
Seizing her wrist, Torsten peeled her away, but as he turned, he saw the swaddled infant in her other arm, and all he could come up with to say was, “I’m sorry,” before pushing on through.
She wasn’t the first to beg his mercy and wouldn’t be the last. The moment she uttered his name, eyes of the starving and homeless fell upon him like ravenous wolves. The crowd swelled in his direction, screaming and hollering. Guards did their best to calm them, but it was no use. Emotions were too high.
Torsten found his way to the doors of Yarrington Cathedral and slipped inside. Pounding fists echoed, but Shieldsmen within held the doors shut. Of all places, the Cathedral needed to be kept secluded from the madness.
Not because it needed to be kept clean. Though having Yarrington retain some dignity in these trying times wasn’t a bad thought. But it wasn’t Iam’s way. Churches and Cathedrals were built sturdy, and all across Pantego, they’d long served as havens for those with nowhere else to go.
However, the Cathedral was already filled with priests—all of Hornsheim, there and waiting. Only at the selections of High Priests were so many men of the cloth together in the same place, but then, it was only priests. Now, hundreds of sisters and monks filled the place. Their beds between every arch, every side altar, every pew.
The cathedral was as packed as any Dawning morning.
Only nobody was praying. They all survived no differently than the rabble outside. Waiting for food and water. Complaining about the conditions. Snoring loudly.
There was so much clamor that, for once, Torsten’s footsteps didn’t echo on the polished marble. And just like outside, most didn’t notice his presence. He felt like a ghost in the aisle, not stirred by faith and conviction like his previous visits to the beautiful edifice that was the home of his God. A part of him couldn’t help but know that Iam had given all He had left to provide them this last chance to show they were worthy of being His favored children.
He stopped at the front pew, directly before the altar, the very same place he’d sat when Dellbar was anointed High Priest. Moonlight pouring in kept the great crystal Eye of Iam bright and shining. The only part of the Cathedral left untouched. The altar itself was covered in unfurled scrolls and dusty tomes. Words in languages ancient and modern filled them. It looked like Pi’s mad scrawling when Torsten found him that night, long ago.
The words the boy had used then tortured his mind. Buried… not dead.
Torsten sat, scrunched between two sleeping monks. His legs were sore from walking the city. His brain ached from all the madness outside, and from their planning, and most of all, from the thought that Liam’s line wasn’t dead, but endured in the blood of his most-worthy, dark-magic-wielding adversaries.
Sighing, Torsten reached up and removed his blindfold. The world became black, and for the first time since returning to Yarrington, he felt like he had a moment to himself. He could focus on his breathing, and all the din of the cathedral’s inhabitants melted away.
He didn’t pray. He didn’t ask anything of Iam. He simply sat. And he wasn’t sure how long he was there before he heard a familiar voice.
“Searching for answers?” Dellbar asked.
“Searching for anything,” Torsten replied.
Dellbar chuckled, then gave a sleeping monk a whack with his cane. The man cursed, then noticed who it was and apologized profusely. Dellbar sat beside Torsten, and Torsten couldn’t help but be reminded of when he and Wren the Holy sat like this, many times before.
“Sometimes it’s pleasant not to see, isn’t it?” Dellbar asked.
“It is.” He clutched the enchanted blindfold and held it up. “You want it?”
“It doesn’t work for me.”
“Right. Iam chose me to be His eyes, His shield, and His sword.” Only then did Torsten realize he’d left Salvation in the Royal Crypt.
“You place too much responsibility on those broad shoulders, Torsten,” Dellbar said. “Have you ever wondered if, perhaps, He gave you your sight back simply because you never deserved to lose it?”
“No. And you don’t believe it, either.”
“Too true. There has to be a plan, doesn’t there? That’s the way of the Glass Kings. Here by His mandate, to carry His word.”
“Have you lost your faith now? After all of this?” Torsten asked.
“Quite the opposite. I’ve just stopped trying to hear Him, and started to actually listen.”
“And what does He tell you?” Torsten asked.
“For one, He answered how we can dispel Nesilia’s demons before they possess all of our bodies. And I may not care about much, but I would like to die in control of my own self. I felt helpless once, lying on the floor in my church as Redstar’s savages slaughtered everyone around me. Never again.”
“I can agree with that.” Torsten turned to face him, though he let himself remain blind. “How will it be done?”
Dellbar drew a deep breath. “’Light and darkness, we live or die together. Bound, eternally. One cannot be without the other. And one cannot die without the other. Put faith in the Light, and fade to shadow with them. It is the only way.’”
“Is that scripture? I’ve never heard it.”
“No. Iam spoke to me in Hornsheim. In a dream, or directly, I’m not sure.”
“Does it matter?”
Dellbar gave Torsten a pat on the leg. “Now you’re getting it. No, it doesn’t at all. And I didn’t understand it at first until your friend showed us his cursed stone.”
“He’s not my friend,” Torsten muttered.
“He has to be. He’s here. We may fail, Torsten. I’ve accepted that, and you must as well if we have any chance. And better to die beside friends than in a city full of strangers.”
“Have you been drinking again?”
“I think the people out there need an ale much more than I do.”
“Or three.” Torsten let out a chuckle with him. That was Dellbar, able to see the light and dark in any situation, at the same time. Torsten had missed him in Latiapur when he seemed out of sorts, but this was the High Priest Yarrington needed right now. One who could accept the awful fact that Torsten’s brain refused—they could lose.
“So, how does banishing her demons work?” Torsten asked.
“So long as the gates of Elsewhere remain open, it’s a temporary solution,” Dellbar explained. “But it is as Iam said. ‘Put faith in the Light, and fade to shadow with them.’ And so, we who have dedicated our lives to his Light can absorb the demons after their hosts are killed.”
“And be possessed yourselves?”
“Holding the Brike Stone showed me the way. In that moment, when we are full of darkness, we must let go. Bind them in our souls with faith, and be banished with them to the furthest recesses of Elsewhere, where it could take Iam-knows-how-long to escape again.”
“I’m not sure I’m understanding,” Torsten said.
“You are,” Del
lbar said. “You just don’t want to hear it, but you have to listen. To dispel them, we who have willingly given our eyes to see only with His, must go with them.”
“So, you must die?”
“In a sense.”
Torsten shook his head. “And those who have already been taken… what about them?”
“They’re already gone.”
“Sora isn’t,” Torsten argued.
“And do you have hundreds of magical artifacts as powerful as a bar guai or a dragon’s cursed heart lying around?”
Torsten bit his lip.
“Then why do we even need the stone?” he asked. “We’ll gather all the priests together. Ignore the rest and banish her.”
“She is no mere demon, Torsten. It will take extraordinary power to hold her. And just as the Brike Stone must go with Nesilia, the light we hold in our hearts is our weapon against the others. It is our magic. It is how priests of old healed or summoned shields of blinding light. Maybe the magic comes from a different place, but it’s the same. Magic is in the blood, and faith flows in ours.”
“You know that’s not true. Their magic comes from Elsewhere.”
“A domain created by Iam to hold his enemies.”
“No,” Torsten said. “The mystics are born with the curse that allows them to draw on Elsewhere’s dark power. Anyone can be a priest of Iam.”
“Can they?” Dellbar asked, a hint of playfulness to his tone. “Would they? Or do only some find that unfillable hole in their hearts that can only be filled by undying, dutiful faith in His power and Light? I wonder if that Sora girl felt the same before she summoned fire to her fingertips?”
“Why are you bringing her up?” Torsten asked quickly. “Did she talk with you?”
“You brought her up.”
“I… oh.” He leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “She’s not who we thought she was, Dellbar.”
“I didn’t think her to be anything but an ally in our most desperate time,” Dellbar replied.
“I don’t mean that.”
“Though Mahraveh seems to approve, and the girl is an excellent judge of character, wouldn’t you say? You get that sense from her right away.”
“Not any of that.” Torsten swallowed back his suddenly dry throat. He leaned in even more, forehead against the side of Dellbar’s head just to make sure he was as close as could be. “If I tell you something, will you promise, here before Iam, to keep it between us?”
“I doubt Iam is listening in.”
“I’m serious.”
“Of course, Torsten,” Dellbar said, as earnest as Torsten had ever heard him. “Since I found you wasting away in that cell, I value nothing more than our conversations.”
“Well…” Torsten swallowed again. Now his throat stung like his body was rejecting even saying the words aloud. His lips parted a few times, only for nothing to come out. But Dellbar waited patiently, listening, as he’d said he’d learned to do.
“Sora claims to be the bastard daughter of Liam Nothhelm and Sora Sumati, the last known Ancient One of the Mystic Order.” He was breathless by the time he forced it all out. His stomach turned over. His hands beaded with sweat.
“Does she?” Dellbar laughed.
“Ridiculous, right?”
“Less ridiculous than a shred of cloth giving a blind man the ability to see.”
“You believe it?” Torsten asked.
“I didn’t know the man,” Dellbar said. “Or the woman. Or their daughter. She told you this?”
“In the Royal Crypt. Right in front of his family.”
“And what did she ask for?”
“She told me not to tell anyone,” Torsten said. “That she didn’t want anything.”
“Yet, you told me.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Relax, Torsten. I’m not judging you. All I wonder, is why lie about something you want nothing out of?”
“To distract us, because Nesilia is still in control of her.”
Dellbar let out a low murmur of acknowledgement. “Perhaps. What do you think? Not in here.” He poked Torsten in the side of the head. “But when you listen to your heart.”
“I don’t know,” Torsten admitted. “The thing is, I’ve learned that Liam wasn’t the man we all saw.”
“You mean he wasn’t God incarnate walking around with a sword?” Dellbar said. “Instead, he was a simple man, flawed like all men, who got sick and died, like all men?”
“I know he never loved Oleander. She was a prize to him, nothing more… like a rare horse brought home from Panping.” His heart plummeted as he spoke that last sentence, but he knew it was true.
“My question for you is, whether or not Sora is who she says she is, do you doubt that Liam has other bastards out there? I’ve had a lot of books read to me these past two weeks, both from Hornsheim, and the Castle libraries. My predecessor noted some peculiar things.”
Torsten sat up. “About a Panpingese daughter?”
“No,” Dellbar said. “But enough for me to believe that whether she is or isn’t his, I doubt she’s the only one. And if so, why not her? Wouldn’t the king of kings fall for an enemy as powerful as he was? Much as Iam loved Nesilia.”
“You believe the lies spread by her cultists?”
“I believe what I felt that night when He looked at her through my eyes,” Dellbar said. “So, I ask you again, what do you believe?”
Torsten’s fingernails dug into his palms. As if learning about Liam’s sordid past wasn’t enough, now the High Priest spoke of love between Iam and His foulest enemy—the same things Redstar had said. The same truths lying beneath the lines of all the stories of the God Feud that generations of priests refused to acknowledge until it felt like heresy to imagine them. But now, after so much, Torsten could see that. But Sora?
“I don’t know,” Torsten said again. “I can’t… I can’t see the lines of her face or the color of her eyes, not anymore. And I can’t remember how they looked when I met her with my own sight. I don’t know if he’s in there.”
“Then, why worry?” Dellbar said plainly. As if it were that easy.
“If the Nothhelm line isn’t dead—“
“It is. Whether she’s his or not, she’s as legitimate as Pi and Mahraveh’s marriage. Who cares where she came from? The Kingdom you loved is dead, Torsten. You aren’t fighting for it any longer. Just walk outside and look around.”
“Then what will it be?”
“When you know, you’ll know.” Dellbar took Torsten’s hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “Stay strong, my friend. These people may not have a King, but right now, they have a leader.” He let go, dusted off his robe, and stood. “Now, I have some priests I have to convince to sacrifice their lives. And you need some sleep.”
Torsten grunted. He listened as the tapping of Dellbar’s staff faded. He, as usual, made about as much sense as he didn’t. Speaking in riddles came naturally to High Priests. It must have been the position—countless people looking for answers that it turns out, they probably didn’t have.
One thing was for certain, however. Truth or not, Torsten couldn’t let Sora distract him. Maybe she was still under Nesilia’s control, but that meant the Buried Goddess already knew everything they were planning. All Torsten could do was have faith that the last kind of person he ever thought he could trust, could be trusted.
He’d gone down to the Royal Crypt to speak with his King one last time and instead, found her. Like Dellbar said, maybe it was time to leave them all behind, anyway, to dedicate their final days to what was good about Liam and his bloodline—bringing people together. They never did it kindly, not until Pi, but still, here they all were.
“If You are still out there,” Torsten said, aiming his face toward where decades of visiting this very spot told him Iam’s altar would be. “I’m listening.”
Then, he tied his blindfold back on so he could see all the hapless priests roaming and with no idea yet what was coming. He’d have
to trust them to keep the demons from spreading throughout Yarrington as their host bodies fell.
Who didn’t he have to trust? Mystics, thieves, Black Sandsmen. One mistake, and the world ended. There was no retreat like in one of Liam’s campaigns. There was no surrender like his enemies had done. Torsten was back in Valin Tehr’s arena, fighting a giant. Survive or die.
He was about to stand when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Uh, Torsten.” Whitney Fierstown slowly shuffled out in front of him, not wearing his usual carefree expression, but looking as grim as Torsten probably did.
“What?” Torsten asked.
“You dropped this.” Whitney knelt, and Torsten noticed that he had Salvation balanced across his palms, presenting the blade like a knight to his King. The blade had been reforged, but the hilt had been wielded by Liam himself. The thief could’ve sold it, used the earnings to buy a whole town somewhere far away where Nesilia might never reach. Yet, here he was, looking like a damned fool.
“Get up,” Torsten said, gripping the handle and lifting it high. The refracted moonlight coming through the Eye of Iam made the steel glint. “I thought you’d keep it.”
“That’s really what you think of me, isn’t it?” Whitney asked.
“Isn’t that what you want people to think?”
“I… what… you’re welcome.” Whitney groaned and turned to leave. Torsten grasped his arm and stopped him.
“Thank you, Lord Blisslayer.”
He smirked and plopped right down next to Torsten on the pew. “Ha. You still remember my old name.”
“Fierstown doesn’t count as a new name, you fool.”
“It does the way I use it this time.”
Torsten wasn’t sure what he meant, but somehow, he understood. Whitney’s expression bore conviction that could’ve only been found in one who’s made peace with his past. He’d seen it on the faces of many great men before they died.
“We didn’t mean to tell you that way,” Whitney said. “She made me promise not to tell anyone, I swear. I told her she should be Queen, and she nearly bit my head off.”
“You really love her, don’t you?” Torsten asked.
Word of Truth Page 47
