by J. Gibson
What could have been.
CHAPTER XXII: OVERCAST
Amun
“Our losses were nontrivial,” Archbishop Sangrey said, countenance still sallow after the mass relocation spell. “Over one-thousand chevaliers, felled. The Magister Adra Erin, vanished. Aitrix Kravae, escaped.”
The Vicar scoffed. “How did she escape?”
“We underestimated her.”
The members of the Ennead sat, considering the air.
Amun kept her eyes down, her quill, paper, and ink readied.
This ought to be the work of machines. Recounting would be well-suited to them.
Unbeknownst to the Ennead, Amun had seen it all. She had traveled on the outskirts of the host, beyond sight, even taking a few times from their supplies. Their capital had been in such a frenzy that no one had noticed her missing. The Ennead had held no official meetings in the chamber.
Exhausted by her journey, she had taken a bath so hot it reddened her skin when she returned.
A muted discussion between the archbishops went on for some time, audible enough for her to hear and transcribe, but not without minor difficulty. She kept quiet as she always had. On a few occasions, the Archbishop Delacroix glanced over at her, causing Amun’s chest to tense.
“You ought to have let those women die.”
Sangrey waved her hand. “Vicar, you are not in command of this body. You are a voice by elect. I need not explain my decision to you, but if I must, I shall do so simply. If you saw what we have, the monstrous storm which approaches this city, creeps across the land like a plague, you would have saved them.” She stood. “These young women, still daughters of our blessed Mother, I remind you, fought valiantly, lost individuals they cared for, and did not attempt to flee. The one, Athenne, did not kill in their attack on the city. They were subordinates to Kravae, and nothing more. We have lost our way if we should hand them over to the God of the Dead.”
“I concur with Sangrey,” Archbishop Dred interjected, unusual for her. “I would resign my station this instant if we had left another spirit to Korvaras. Our duty is to save and protect, to maintain order and promote progress, not to enact vengeance or cruelty. We’ve done too much of these, already. The women are outlaws. They have done harm. ‘Tis for Gohheia and Kismet to decide their fates in death, not for the Patron of the Dead or his minions to trap them in a state of suspension between. Our foremothers would shudder.”
An image rolled in Amun’s mind, that legion of horrors, countless as the stars in the sky, torn and tattered, a terror in the night. She had watched from afar, but still too near. They had once been people, like she and they, dressed in jerkins and tunics and trousers, in gowns and mails and plate and thick jackets and pauldrons, boots, and braces. They carried weapons, if they had the limbs for it.
There had been no animals, beyond the churning mass of mortals, human and fair folk alike. A company of jittering, taunting cadavers, all shrieking in the same odious tongue, descended on the host in the mist, death made flesh. They were death. Screaming and cackling and hissing, cloaked in the veil of white that must have been denser the closer one stood, for Amun had perceived more than the Ennead described this day from her high point in the distance. The dead had appeared as if they were always there, waiting.
“Those that they killed, these terrorists, deserve to be avenged.” Bitterness shadowed the Vicar’s words. “Have we forgotten Father Garron Latimer, the innocent deacons, the child of Archbishop Crane? Kravae fled. They stayed because they could not. There must be retribution, else we confess we were too weak—”
“Vicar,” Delacroix interrupted him, “we promised these young women that they would have a sentence of confinement at five ages, half a decade, in the Priory cellars, should they attend the host and face the Undeath. They did so. Two of their allies perished in the battle. Their leader betrayed them and left them to die. If we renege on our word, we invite chaos into our declarations. We shall sustain our end of the deal and uphold order, or have you forgotten that there are three pillars in our keep?”
“They knew with whom they consorted when they sided with Aitrix Kravae. Kravae is a dangerous ideologue, a devious craven with little regard for the lives of others, and even less for the will and want of the All-Mother.” He turned to Archbishop Crane. “Aris, these fiends murdered your daughter. What say you?”
Amun glanced around the room. Am I still meant to record?
Crane looked reflective. “We promised them five ages, and after, they may go free. We swore them and those who descend from them exile in perpetuity. That is enough.”
With displeasure, the Vicar succumbed. “All in favor?”
“Aye,” they answered together, finalizing the conviction.
As the members of the Ennead filtered out, Delacroix lingered behind. Amun suspected she wanted to speak to her, but she had a question of her own.
“Archbishop, may I have a moment?” she asked.
“You may.”
“I would like to visit the women in the cellar.”
“For?”
“I want to speak to them of the Mother’s Truth.”
The Archbishop gave a half-smile. “Ever dutiful. I’ll let the inquisitors and others know.”
“Thank you, Archbishop.”
“My pleasure.”
Amun turned to leave, but Delacroix addressed her once more: “Sister Halleck.”
She stopped. “Archbishop?”
“It has been a while since I’ve seen you.”
“I was—” Her words trailed off. “I was spending some time at the house of the dying near the Plaza, Archbishop. Forgive me. I know ‘tis above my station.”
“Curious.”
“Archbishop—”
The Archbishop chuckled through her nose. “No matter.”
Delacroix surely knew the truth. If the Archbishop could overlook her transgression, her unauthorized sneaking after the host, Amun would not press further. She bowed graciously and exited the chamber.
The Priory extended as a dark, grey labyrinth. In a haze, Amun felt at once as though she had no idea where she was going and as if she followed the correct path.
Walking, she thought of the great women and men who had erected this grandiose monstrosity. She passed few, machines more than other deacons or inquisitors. A dream, until she came upon the entrance to the cellars.
At the bottom of the stairs, Amun paused between the two guards, who did not address her. Evidently, Delacroix had somehow sent word of her admission already. One of their prisoners came into view as Amun approached, sat against the bars of her compartment not far from the mouth of the space.
The woman saw her, and turned.
“Forgive me, Sister—” Their captive did not appear to know her name, merely her title.
“Amun Halleck, and you are Athenne Zedd.”
“Forgive me, Sister Halleck.” The woman grasped the bars of her cell. “I am not in a proper frame of mind.” Her lids fluttered, the blue orbs beneath them bloodshot, veined in red and glistening pink.
“Your mind pays for your wrongdoing.”
“I know.” The prisoner called Athenne peered at Amun through tired eyes, ringed in black and purple, likely from lack of restful sleep. “Will She have me?”
“Whom?”
“The Mother.”
Amun examined her face at length. Her own coquelicot irises no doubt ominously aglow in the dim torch light. Humans called the elven gaze the bloodlit stare for its innate menace.
The question drove the air from Amun’s lungs as she contemplated her response. This woman sat helpless. Amun did not wish to confirm her grief, yet she would not lie. “I cannot say,” she answered. “You have time, and the opportunity in five ages. Devote your life to embodying the three pillars of the Matrian Truth on Earth, as our Mother in the Celestia, and you may be saved in eternal rest.”
In a shallow, defeated way, the woman inhaled.
Amun clasped her hand on
the bar. “I pray She may forgive you.” She tried to sound reassuring. “Have you ever heard the tale of Athenne the Good?”
“She was an archbishop, Saint Athenne.” Their captive’s head lifted. “I was named for her.”
Amun smiled. “In her later life, she was a woman of profound scholarship. She went about the common body long before any who stand now, expounding the Word of the Mother, Her Blest Writ, to the people, young and eldered. It was not in this piety that she upheld the three pillars, but in the devotion of her life to good works. She declared her desires openly, made the knowledge plain and simple, for anyone’s understanding.
“Unlike others of her time, she did not delegate the task of spreading Scripture to her lessers, but took it upon herself.” Amun withdrew her hand from the woman’s. “My point is not that you ought to preach Scripture, but that she is seen as a saint in the present for her devotion to good-doing. Good deeds cannot undo bad, but the bad do not negate the good. While we cannot say for certain what leads us to Nihil, ‘tis said that the wayward daughter, lost in a sea of despair and darkness, may find her path to shore, by the Mother’s light.”
“Did you know the man we killed?” the one called Athenne asked abruptly. “The priest?”
Amun’s throat tightened. “I did.”
“Well?”
“Well.”
“Was he a good man?”
Amun dropped her head once in affirmation.
“We saw him commit a terrible crime against a woman. That’s why we chose him for it.”
“How?"
“At a Matronian temple. Knights of Faith there informed us that he was sick, marked to die. Where we killed him was around the location of his crime.”
“His name was Father Garron Latimer,” Amun said. “A creature of Korvaras that he referred to as the Beast cursed him. Under its influence, he committed a crime. I spoke to his victim. He did not harm her of his own want. ‘Twas he who asked me to tend to her well-being, if I could.”
The woman’s eyes darted about. “He was compelled?”
“Father Latimer devoted his life to good-doings.” Amun swallowed, staving off tears. “What the Beast forced him to do tormented him so that I suspect he may’ve taken his own life, if you hadn’t murdered him.”
Tense silence fell, longer than sorrow alone could occasion.
“I am sorry.” Their prisoner broke the unease, her focus to the floor, her voice deep with contrition. “I hope you may forgive me for what I’ve done.”
“Forgiveness is not pardoning, and mine is not the indulgence you ought to seek.” Amun pointed upward. “Only the mercy of One matters. None but She may absolve us from our wickedness and relieve us of our wrongs.”
“I know,” the woman named Athenne replied.
Amun stood from her seat. “I must be off.”
“Will you return?”
Their gazes met.
“I suspect not.”
“Before you go,” the woman said, “I have a confession, if this may be my sole opportunity to speak to anyone with regard for what I have to say.” She collected herself in a pause, then went on. “As a girl, I committed a terrible act.” Her voice trembled. “I suppose I had no right to judge the priest worth dying.” A tear spilled down her cheek. “I grew up in Orilon. I won’t trouble you with the details, but I—I killed another girl in anger. At the time, I thought it just for something she had done to me. I did not intend to slay her, only to teach her a lesson. I left her body in a river. No one ever found her.”
Amun said nothing.
“I have felt for much of my life since, that I did not deserve—” Her words broke off. She inhaled and exhaled, sniffled, on the verge of weeping. “—I did not deserve the Mother’s love.”
“Have you told anyone else of this?”
“Her,” she answered, “in my prayers.”
Amun’s brow knitted together. “Athenne, our Mother sees the truth of your heart. All of Her children are deserving of Her love, no matter their faults.”
Athenne cried and then responded with contrived composure, at a shore of gasping. “I joined the Saints because I felt purposeless and helpless. If I could go back—” She released a quaking exhalation and wiped tears from her cheeks, pulling hair back from her face.
“I believe that you are not a bad person,” Amun said.
As if to thank her, Athenne nodded.
Amun would not visit the other woman. Instead, without another word, she walked away, between the cellar rows, and to the staircase. She ascended the steps until she arrived at the hall, closing the door behind her.
There was but one place that she wanted to be.
Outside, nature had allotted this day a dismal atmosphere. A curdling sky of clouds rolled overhead, like the foaming waves of an angry sea, battering against the jagged rocks of a craggy cliff; except, this ocean extended beyond the horizon, beyond seeing and the upward ends of the world.
Where Amun had come, stone pillars and bricks of black and grey stood uniform, encircled by high, elven-wrought iron fencing in the shape of a diamond, with four gates at each side. She walked the rows of new and crumbling mounds of marble and granite, scanning their varied inscriptions and flowering laments. At the northwest corner of the yard, she halted. Gnarled trees surrounded a stone there, singular and fresh in its placement, bathed in the watery light of the Mother’s Eye, which hovered behind its veil above, casting timid shadows.
This afternoon, there was no wind, only far-off bells, a ritual of collective mourning for the city in the wake of its recent hardships and defeats. Their noise reverberated against the faces of the trees and the stones, in deep notes of grief and loss. She idled among the bodies of the many loved, somewhere, at some time, who had returned to the Father Earth; their spirits, she hoped, dissolved into their forever peace.
The world stood in suspension, frozen for her and for him, and the rest of them. A calmness attended the moment, and unrest. She had no words to say, but filled with passions and reeling. Uncertainty shadowed what came next, yet whatever the ambiguity, she had found her place of belonging. The Ennead would do as they saw fit. Their Vicar, in particular. She would carry forth, in grief, in fury, in love, toward wisdom, hope, understanding, and a reckoning as none before.
Her eyes danced to a rest on his name. She heard the song of his voice as if he stood there beside her. Her memories would maintain him, that deep reverence and admiration and short-lived kinship. Along with the ages of his life, the runic script of the gravestone read:
The Clergy of Gohheia raised this marker in memory of the good Father Garron Latimer, who served dutifully and well his Church and All-Mother
These delicate instants of remembrance would be their lasting bond. He no longer existed here, not in the tangible sense, but he remained within her, stirring, as did the countless others whom they had lost. His work had made her its creation, rooted deep in her mind, ineluctable and driving.
There was a great deal that they did not know and much more for her to learn and to become. She had resolved, for herself, that their path no longer held true, that they failed to act in the Mother’s interest. The Undeath that had risen in the south would come, in time. Whether they could defeat it, she did not know.
Even so, she did not feel frightened. From her hair, she drew a single white lily, and placed it atop his grave. The sun broke through the clouds and fell upon her face, and warmed her to her core. In the distance, the bells continued to ring, persistent and unyielding, as she was, ever more.
Her gaze set on high, she prayed.
The End
(*To be continued in Book Two: The Ember Reach)
*Dear Athenne will not return until Book Four: The Vile God.
APPENDIX
The NATIONS of IMIOS [ihm-ee-ohss]
The Sacred Empire
The Kingdom of Abbisad
[abb-uh-sahd]
The Kingdom of Beihan
[bai-hahn]
T
he Kingdom of Reneris
[ren-ehr-uss]
The Republic of Xarakas
[zerr-ahk-uss]
LOCATIONS
Aros
[ahr-ohss]
(the Imperial City)
Laorta
[laye-orr-tahh]
Kordyr
[kohr-deer]
Imbredon
[imm-bree-dohn]
Erlan
[uhr-lahn]
Ghora
[gohr-uhh]
Ostland
[ohst-lund]
Arkala
[arr-khal-uhh]
Abela
[uh-bell-uhh]
Soignan
[soh-nahn]
Fausse Woods
[fowse]
Arnlan Forest
[ahrn-lahn]
Ventlan Marsh
[vehnt-lahn]
Outmore Loch
[owt-mohr lawk]
The FIRST GODS / CELESTIAL NINE
Gohheia – The All-Mother, Queen of the Overrealm (Aspects: Creation, Destruction, and Being)
[goe-hie-uhh]
Epaphael – The Otherkind Mater, the Malformant, Kismet (Aspects: Time, Destiny, and Damnation)
[epp-uh-fye-ell]
Asdamos – It, He, Lord of the Lost (Aspects: Dimensions and Space)
[azz-dahm-ohss]
Vekshia – The Matron, the Patron of None (Aspects: Hope and Despair)
[vehk-shie-uhh]
Lahrael (Aspects: Wisdom and Greed)
[lahr-ai-ell]
Isanot – The Abhorrer, Amor, King of the Tower (Aspects: Love, Hate, Passion)
[ee-sah-noht]
Sitix – The Father Earth, Father Nature, the Preserver, the Wooded One (Aspects: Nature, Calamity, and Matter)
[see-tiks]
Vysyn (Aspects: Energy, Fire, and Winter)
[vai-sin]
Korvaras – Patron of the Undead, God of Death, the Lord of the Dead (Aspects: Death and Life)
[kohr-vahr-uhss]
The ENNEAD (of the MATRIAN CHURCH)
Breiman Umbra [bray-muhn umm-bruh]
The Vicar of Gohheia, first man to hold the title.