by Anthony Ryan
“Best come on then,” Brewer said, turning to follow in Sihlda’s wake. As we passed the other inmates, I saw that none felt obliged to offer any bows, but every pair of eyes was quick to look away. Sihlda might command respect here, but Brewer commanded fear. As we traversed the shuffling line of weary souls, I caught a few glares directed at Brewer’s safely turned back. Most were just the dark grimace of resentment of the weak towards the strong, but others were the more rigid but bright-eyed stare that rose from true hate or long-nursed grudges. There were also a few leers of naked lust, directed at Toria for the most part but a few also focused on me.
“What the fuck are you looking at, weasel face?” Toria snarled at one overly interested inmate with unusually narrow features and a prominent nose. He shrank back a step but seemed unable to turn his gaze away, obliging me to restrain Toria as she began an instinctive lunge, fists balled.
“Leave it,” I said, keeping my tone and face expressionless as I tugged her along.
“Don’t like gawpers,” she griped, pulling her arm free of my hand.
“You might want to get used to it.” I surveyed the passing array of unwashed bodies clad in earth-stained clothes that weren’t quite rags. “Don’t seem to be many women here.”
We followed Brewer down the curving ramp all the way to the crater floor. There were people at work here too, two dozen prisoners carrying sacks from a shaft and piling them up at the base of the slope. They contrasted with the other inmates in being not quite so thin with less threadbare clothes. They were also more inclined to offer a friendly countenance.
“I am pleased to welcome our new brother and sister to the temple,” Sihlda said, extending a hand to beckon us forward. “Alwyn and Toria.”
The prisoners all paused in their labours to offer a nod, some placing their hands over their chests in the greeting of the devout Covenanter to their own kind. While I was quick to don an expression of appropriate solemnity and return the gesture, Toria crossed her arms and confined any greeting to a terse jerk of her head. Although this group differed from those at the upper portions of the crater by including several women among their number, their presence failed to alleviate Toria’s guarded suspicion.
“Come,” Sihlda went on, moving to the dark portal of the mineshaft. “I’m sure you will wish to pay observance to the Martyr shrine before we attend to other business.”
I kept the obvious question from reaching my lips but Toria was not so circumspect. “What business?”
“All in good time, young sister,” Sihlda told her with mild amusement, her voice taking on an echo as her small form faded into the blackness of the shaft.
Toria came to a halt, turning to me in trepidation. I gave a meaningful glance at Brewer, standing next to the shaft entrance in pointed expectation. When she continued to hesitate, I put an arm around her shoulders and guided her forwards, feeling her tremble and stifle a gasp as the shadow enveloped us.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
During our time on the road I had assessed Toria as a mostly fearless soul, or at least well practised in the art of concealing such things. However, her gasp as we entered the tunnel told a different story.
“Is it the dark or the confinement?” I asked in a low murmur.
“Both,” she whispered back. Her eyes were bright, catching a small gleam from a torch burning somewhere in the depths ahead. I knew Brewer’s hulking presence at our back added to her apprehension. “Don’t like being so far from the sight of the sky.”
“I’m here,” I said, hoping she found some reassurance in a statement of the obvious. “Besides, I doubt these folk wish us ill.”
“They’re too friendly.” The gleam of her eyes flickered as they darted about. “What kind of gaol is this?”
I lowered my voice as much as I dared, putting my lips close to her ear. “One with a shrine. Which means there are people here willing to believe in hope. That’s something we can use.”
She fell silent for a short while before swallowing hard and replying with a forced laugh, words emerging in a rapid tumble. “Or we could sell them a map to Deckin’s treasure.”
“Yes,” I laughed in return, squeezing her shoulders. “There’s always that.”
The torchlight was soon joined by others as we ventured deeper, revealing rough-hewn stone walls and a surprisingly smooth floor. My feet detected a gentle but definite downward slant while my skin flushed at an unexpected warmth to the air. The shaft had a musty smell that mingled damp stone with a faint whiff of rot, but it wasn’t unbearable and held no trace of excrement. Those who toiled here at least had the good sense to find somewhere to dispose of their filth.
A hundred or so paces brought us to a junction where the shaft met several others. The sound of pick and hammer echoed up from the other tunnels and we were obliged to stand aside for an inmate making his way to the surface bearing a sack of freshly mined ore.
“Work is the price we pay to serve at this shrine,” Sihlda explained. She stood beside the narrowest tunnel, the only one from which I could detect no sound. “Brewer, be so good as to show Toria her quarters and provide her the tools she will need. Alwyn—” she gestured to the silent tunnel “—please come with me.”
Toria tensed in my grip as the outlaw’s instinct towards flight or struggle took hold. “It’s all right,” I whispered to her. “This is all just another cage. Be patient.”
Grunting a sigh, she straightened, shrugging my arm from her shoulders, and followed Brewer’s large form into the maw of the widest shaft.
Sihlda waited by the tunnel entrance with an expectant smile until I consented to step into its confines. It stretched away in front of me, its terminus lost to a blackness so absolute it seemed to swallow the light from the torch she held. Sensing that further query would not be welcome I started forward whereupon Sihlda began to voice questions of her own.
“Do you have no other name than Alwyn?”
“In truth, no,” I replied, biting down on an expletive laden curse as my head connected with the tunnel’s low and irregular ceiling. “As is the way with bastards.”
“But not outlaws. For instance, beyond these walls Brewer was known as Brewer the Butcher. Perhaps you heard of him?”
“Can’t say as I have.” This was true, which seemed odd since outlaws of any repute were usually known to Deckin’s band. It made me wonder if Brewer might have exaggerated his reputation somewhat.
“No matter,” Sihlda said. “So, if he was the Butcher, what, pray tell, were you?”
“I had many names hurled at me over the years, most far too coarse and profane for the ears of an Ascendant. Though, an outlaw of some repute once named me the Fox of Shavine Forest. This was all before what I like to call my enlightenment—”
I heard her make a small, restrained noise which it took me a moment to recognise as a smothered laugh. “How well you speak,” she said. “Have you had schooling?”
“Only in the truth of the Covenant. I was fortunate in my teacher. A fellow who, through his kind heart and deep knowledge of the scrolls, steered me from the outlaw’s life and opened my soul to the Seraphile’s grace.”
“A commendable fellow indeed. How came you by him?”
“On the Trail of Shrines. A few companions and I were pursuing our trade on the King’s Road, without much success it must be said, when we found him. Just one man, a humble hostler to trade, making his own pilgrimage to the Shrine to Martyr Stevanos, unworried by fear for he knew his faith would preserve him. And so it did. As my friends began to assail him he raised no hand in his defence, instead giving voice to Covenant scripture. My friends were deaf to its message but not I…”
I fell silent, coming to a halt with a wistful shake of my head. “Truth cuts worse than any knife, and it cut me that day, Ascendant Sihlda, all the way to my core. I gave all my accumulated loot to my fellow outlaws in return for leaving the hostler alone and together we made pilgrimage to the shrine. There I did look upon the relics of Marty
r Stevanos himself and felt the Seraphile’s grace fill my soul and wash clean my sins. Sadly—” I gave a rueful huff as I resumed walking “—when the sheriff’s men caught up with me my sins had not been washed from his ledger and so I find myself here.”
“A tale both beautiful and sad. Is a single word of it true?”
I came to a halt, turning to find Sihlda’s face had lost all trace of humour. Instead, she regarded me with a hard, unwavering query, features composed with the confident expectation of one who harbours no doubts regarding their own authority. This, I knew, was truly the face of an Ascendant of the Covenant of Martyrs. I had never seriously entertained the more outlandish notions regarding the insights supposedly afforded those who rise high in the faith: their unerring facility for discerning truth, their capacity for infallible judgement in matters of law or disagreement. However, the peerless ease with which this woman had seen through my veneer of lies made me wonder for the first time if there might be something to all the superstition.
I briefly entertained the notion of continuing the lie, perhaps even embellishing it further with jocular protestations that my redemption at the Shrine to Martyr Stevanos had left me incapable of deceit. But an outlaw with any modicum of wisdom knows when his mask has slipped. I had little doubt that my future prospects of survival and eventual escape rested solely with whatever favour I could garner from this woman.
“The man who taught me Covenant lore truly was a hostler,” I said. I tried to offer a weak smile of apology but, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, succeeded only in putting an ugly twist on lips already permanently misshapen thanks to my tenure in the pillory. “Or had been in his previous life,” I added with a cough, finding I had to swallow before speaking on. “But he was devout in his faith in the Covenant, despite being as much a villain as any who ran with Deckin Scarl.”
“And where is he now, this devout villain?”
“Dead.” To this day I don’t know why I continued to speak, but the words flowed as freely and easily as ale from a tapped barrel. “I killed him. I had to. The rest of the band were taken or dead. He was hurt and would have slowed me down. I wanted to pretend it was a kindness to spare him pain but in truth I worried what he might tell the soldiers if they took him alive.”
“Then—” she took a step closer to me, a sudden sweat beading my brow as the torch came within an inch of my face “—would it not be fair to say, Alwyn, that you deserve to be here? You deserve punishment, do you not? For the murder you did? For your other sins, which are surely many?”
Her eyes captured me, holding me in place despite the uncomfortable proximity of her torch. The familiar refrain of denial common to all outlaws rose within me: what choice did a whore’s bastard with no home have? What other scraps do the nobles leave us? Would you not have done the same? But this chorus of excuses was a small, wailing creature now, diminished, I had no doubt, by her.
“Yes,” I replied, voice flat with acceptance. “I deserve to be here. I deserved my time in the pillory and I deserved the hanging they were going to give me. I deserved all of it and more.”
Sihlda blinked slowly and stepped back, a faintly sorrowful smile of satisfaction curving her lips. “Most think the Martyrs’ example consists of naught but suffering and sacrifice,” she said, moving around me, her slight form making it easy even in the confines of the tunnel. “But most are wrong, for it is in the power of knowledge that their true lesson lies. Every Martyr who died to form the Covenant did so in the certain knowledge of who they were and what their faith required them to do. Come and I will show you what the Covenant requires of you.”
She started along the tunnel and I followed, drawn with all the urgent need of a dog trailing its master. I couldn’t say how long I followed her, ears alive for any word she might utter. Even in my most servile moments in Deckin’s company I hadn’t experienced such a desperate need for approval, or, more accurately, as I would understand later, absolution.
The shaft eventually led us to a chamber, its dimensions hidden in total darkness until Sihlda’s torch cast its glow over granite walls. They ascended to a height of at least twenty feet before fading into the gloom above while the long echo of our footfalls told of a truly impressive space.
“Welcome to the Shrine to Martyr Callin,” Sihlda said, touching her torch to another set into the wall by means of a crude iron bracket.
“Callin?” I asked. The name struck a chime in my memory but summoned scant details. I recalled Hostler muttering this a few times, usually when the hour was late and he sat weary and angered by his ungrateful, unreceptive audience.
“You don’t know his story?” Sihlda asked, giving a wry shake of her head as she moved to touch flame to a second torch. “I always find it odd that those most ignorant of Martyr Callin are those who would benefit most from his example.”
She moved on, lighting three more torches, the accumulated glow revealing much of the surrounding chamber. Walls of both smooth and rough stone rose on either side of us, arcing up into the anonymous void in a manner that reminded me of the more ornate Covenant shrines. The walls bracketed a floor covering a space at least fifty paces wide, its limits lost to the dark.
“Yes,” the Ascendant agreed, once again revealing her uncanny insight into my thoughts as she added, “Strange that such a perfect cathedral should be crafted by the random hand of nature, if anything in this world can truly be called random. Look here, if you would.”
She strode towards one of the smooth patches of stone where shadows flickered about what I initially took to be an impractically small doorway. Moving closer, I saw it was in fact an alcove carved into the rock. Even to my unskilled eye I could tell there had been real artistry in the hands that crafted this, the perfectly flat base and sides that curved to an elegant point. Sitting on the base was a small, lidded clay jar.
“The clerics of other shrines will festoon their altars with every relic they can lay hands upon,” Sihlda said. “Many, if not most of them, fakes fashioned to gull clerics greedy for more pilgrims. Here, however, we find we need but one relic for our altar, for Martyr Callin was a man who had learned to shun the treachery of riches.”
Placing her torch in an empty stanchion next to the alcove, she lifted the lid from the pot. “Behold, Alwyn,” she said, retreating a step and beckoning me forward. “The holy relic of Martyr Callin.”
I had never seen a true relic before. My visits to the varied shrines found in the Shavine Marches had been undertaken purely for purposes of thievery. Had I actually entered the Shrine to Martyr Stevanos then the dozen or more bones, strips of flayed skin and blackened vestments adorning the altar would surely have made more of an impression than what I beheld now.
“A shek?” I asked, casting a dubious glance at the Ascendant before returning my gaze to the single copper coin sitting in the jar.
“Quite so,” she said. “You may examine it if you wish.”
I hesitated before reaching for the jar. Faithless as I was, a lifetime of exposure to Covenant lore made the prospect of actually touching a true relic a daunting one. But, when I tipped the coin into my palm, no visions of the Seraphile came upon me and my soul was not flooded with their grace. I felt only the chill of metal and looked upon a small coin much like the countless others I had allowed to slip through my fingers over the course of an eventful and unwise life. Holding it up to the light, I saw that the head stamped onto one side differed from typical Crown coinage. Sheks used today bore either the head of King Tomas or that of his late father, the reputedly more formidable King Mathis the Fourth. More unusual still was that it was the head of a woman.
“Queen Lisselle,” Sihlda said, watching me peer at the coin. “The only woman of the Algathinet dynasty to sit on the throne. In her day, the churls were wont to call her Bloody Liss, for she had not been blessed with a merciful heart.”
“How old is this?” I asked, turning the coin in the torchlight. There were numbers stamped onto the reverse but too fain
t to make out.
“I’d guess it’s been almost two centuries since that coin was minted and eventually found its way into Callin’s purse. He said it was the only coin he had earned through honest labour and so would be the only one he would keep. Callin, you see, was like you, an outlaw for much of his life. The story of his redemption varies greatly for his scroll was penned in a poor hand and those that copied it were even less skilled. But, it is known that having received a vision of the Second Scourge he gave up his villainous ways and walked the length and breadth of Albermaine preaching his warning. ‘For it is certain that the Scourge will claim the wealthy but spare the poor if they open their hearts to the Covenant,’ he said. ‘To know salvation, you must know poverty.’”
Even though I found Sihlda’s words were as commanding as her gaze, my tendency towards cynicism remained. “I doubt that went down well,” I said with a tight grin. The Ascendant, however, merely smiled a little broader.
“On the contrary, Callin gathered many adherents during his travels,” she said. “More than two thousand people were trailing after him at one point. Two thousand churls, to be clear. Those of noble blood were uniformly deaf to his message and less than pleased that so many of their tenants were abandoning their farms to follow a shoeless thief who never washed and preached that ownership of land was an abomination in the sight of the Seraphile.
“Queen Lisselle was always gruesomely efficient in putting a stop to anything that roused discord in her realm. Callin was seized and his followers scattered. One of the more garbled passages in his scroll alludes to a private meeting with the queen, but what passed between them remains forever lost. She did, however, grant him the mercy of a beheading rather than the death normally afforded a heretic, much to the annoyance, it must be said, of senior Covenant clergy. They found his preaching just as alarming as did the nobility. As Callin was led to the block he gave this coin, his only remaining possession, to the axeman in payment for his labour.”