Heaven's Needle

by Liane Merciel

  The town closed bleak and empty around them. Even its ghosts seemed to have deserted it; Asharre could not imagine that the loneliest specter would linger inside the houses that leaned over weed-choked gardens and pitted streets. Shadows filled the broken windows, and the wind moaned across the clattering roofs in a haunting echo of the maelgloth’s cries. She gritted her teeth and willed herself not to hurry toward the inn.

  It was a relief to shut the Rosy Maiden’s doors against the dark. Asharre couldn’t pretend that the inn was safe—not with Falcien’s blood staining the commons and the stench of death seeping in from the stables—but it was better than facing the night and the creatures that hunted it.

  The sigrir stayed up long past midnight, staring out the windows with a blanket around her shoulders. Sometimes she thought she saw misshapen figures darting through the streets, but they could not reach her and she did not fear them. Not as much as she dreaded the morning.

  In the morning they went to Shadefell.

  13

  “She wants Ang’duradh,” Malentir said. “She intends to reclaim it in her husband’s name, for his glory and the triumph of Ang’arta. When our work is done, the Lord Commander will lead his armies here, and the Baozites will regain a foothold in a part of the world they lost six hundred years ago.” The Thornlord folded his hands into his sleeves, regarding Bitharn and Kelland in turn. “I tell you this so that there will be no mistake about my goals or interests in this matter.

  “My task, before my capture, was to learn the cause of Ang’duradh’s fall and find a way to retake the fortress. I’d made substantial progress before events intervened. Thanks to your gracious intercession, I have the opportunity to finish my task and atone for my failure. I am in your debt.” There was a hint of sarcasm in that, but only a hint, Kelland thought.

  They sat in the common room of a farmer’s house outside Carden Vale. Two Celestians and a Thornlord from Ang’arta, seated around a white oak table like old friends. Hard to believe that the moment was real, but there they were.

  There was no trace of the farmer or his family. Malentir had sworn that he had not killed them when he brought Kelland and Bitharn to the place. His sparrow spotted the house from afar, he said; its isolation, coupled with its relative proximity to the town, made it ideal for the three of them to use while they investigated Carden Vale.

  Kelland couldn’t argue with the second part of that, but he wondered about the first. It seemed an improbable stroke of luck that they should stumble upon an empty house precisely when and where it was needed. It was a rich house—incongruously rich, given the poverty of the town—and it hadn’t been empty for long. Mice had barely touched the larders, and the footpaths leading back to town were in good repair. The farmer and his family might not be dead, but their disappearance certainly seemed convenient.

  He’d ask Bitharn about it when they were alone. Her talent for tracking might uncover clues that his own eyes couldn’t find. For now, that mystery had to wait. There was another that needed unraveling first.

  “The Spider suggested to me that we might share some interest in Carden Vale,” Kelland said. “She showed me a woman her servants had captured in Cailan. Her name was Jora.” It was important to remind himself, and them, of that. Jora had been an ordinary woman, with a name and people who loved her, before evil blighted her soul. She deserved to be remembered that way.

  “Jora was … poisoned,” the knight continued. “I felt something in her, corrupting her heart and mind. A touch of evil. Inhuman. Divine.” He avoided the word “Maolite”; if that was the enemy they faced, he wanted the Thorn to confirm it without prompting. “It terrified her. She mumbled things about a ‘nightmare waking’ and an ‘old death,’ and she claimed that she, or people she had been helping, were holding it back somehow. She said that they needed children to do it. ‘Shapers,’ she called them.

  “The Spider said that Jora had been kidnapping children in Cailan and sending them back to this town. She suggested that our interests might align in Carden Vale. She did not tell me why. Now you say that the Spider’s interest lies in reclaiming Duradh Mal. I fail to see how these things are related, or why it would be in my interest, or my temple’s, to help you do that.”

  “It’s the same thing, isn’t it?” Bitharn turned toward the Thornlord. The morning light shone in her hair, turning it to a river of soft gold and amber. In profile, Kelland could see the faint lines that exhaustion had drawn on her face, but he thought she had never been more beautiful. Those lines were part of the price she’d paid for him. “Whatever took hold of Jora was the same thing that corrupted the boy I saw. It’s the same power that prevents you from taking Duradh Mal.”

  “It is,” Malentir said.

  “What is it?” Kelland asked.

  The Thornlord rose and paced across the room. His steps were soundless on the brightly colored rag rugs that covered the farmer’s floor. “The last visitors to Ang’duradh were a band of monks known to history only as the Gray Brothers. The Baozites were never much for record keeping, and after six hundred years, you can imagine how little is left to mark the Brothers’ passing. Calantyr was not yet founded, and the local lords were puffed-up bandits perched on piles of rocks. Few of them could read a word. I spent years trying to retrace the monks’ steps, hoping to find some indication of who they were and how a handful of wandering pilgrims laid Ang’duradh low. I did not expect to find much.

  “And yet, to my surprise, they were remembered. Wherever they’d passed, local folklore was full of dire tales: faceless, gray-cowled wraiths who stole wandering children, babies born as monsters, men and women who became ravening murderers after being bewitched by evil spells. Common stories all, but on the Gray Brothers’ path they had unique details that echoed, however faintly, of truth. There was nothing directly useful to me in those stories … but much that corroborated my suspicions.”

  Bitharn’s expression had sharpened, as it did when she was trying to puzzle out a confusing trail. She sat up a little straighter. “If the records held nothing, how could you know where they passed?”

  “The records on the road held nothing,” Malentir corrected her. “There is one account of the Gray Brothers that survives. Blessed Erinai of the Illuminers accompanied the expedition sent to Duradh Mal when the Celestians realized that the fortress had fallen. It is thanks to her journals that we know anything about the monks. Her writings are kept at the temple in Aluvair. I studied them at length.”

  “Wearing another face, I imagine,” Kelland said.

  The Thornlord smirked, but did not slow his pacing. “Several. I was there for some time. One would hardly have lasted long enough. In any case, through Blessed Erinai’s writings I was able to trace much of the Gray Brothers’ course north from what is now Calantyr into the Irontooths—and, ultimately, to Ang’duradh. Erinai believed, as I did, that the monks were corrupted by Maol. But this left a mystery, which neither she nor I was able to solve: how, if they were Maolites, were the Gray Brothers able to overwhelm the fortress?

  “Servants of the Mad God seldom have much power. Few worship Maol of their own free will. Only the most degenerate are drawn to him, and fools of that sort make poor vessels for divinity. They destroy themselves before accomplishing anything worthwhile. Most Maolites—the unwilling ones—do not even have that. They are consumed by their god; they stagger about like fever victims, delirious and doomed, and the only danger they present is that they might spread their contagion before they die.

  “Given the limited power possessed by most Maolites, it puzzled me that they were able to overwhelm Ang’duradh so completely. It is true that most Baozites have nothing of the god in them, just as the peasants who flock to your chapels are not touched by Celestia, but Maolites die like any other men, and Baozites are very good at killing. Even if the Gray Brothers possessed some real power, Baoz still had priestesses in that age, and they should have been able to deal with Maol’s Blessed easily. They did not. They died
.

  “It was perplexing, but it could not be an immediate danger. Those who sealed the ruins, after all, had not suffered the same fate. When I was unable to learn anything more from indirect study, I opened the seals. Carefully, of course. Very carefully. I was better prepared than the Baozites who had been caught by surprise centuries ago, but I had no desire to be taken unawares by Duradh Mal.”

  “What seals?” Bitharn asked.

  “Most of Duradh Mal was sealed by Celestia’s Blessed soon after its fall,” Kelland told her. “The Knights of the Sun and the Illuminers worked in tandem to craft those wards. After centuries of Baozite rule, the fortress was a locus of the ironlords’ power. We destroyed what we could and sealed the rest to prevent innocents from stumbling inside … or people like the Thorns from trying to use it.”

  “You did,” Malentir agreed. “To your credit, it was not easy to determine the pattern and unravel the weavings, and there were some moderately challenging traps hidden among them. But they were never meant to guard against us, and any wall can be broken, given time and the right tools.”

  “If you’re so terribly clever, why don’t you have Ang’duradh already?” Bitharn interrupted. Kelland was grateful for her retort; he was too unsettled to think of his own. What the Thornlord said was true: they hadn’t considered that the Baozites might work in concert with another power to unravel the wards. The Spider had been sitting in her tower for the better part of a decade, weaving webs on Ang’arta’s behalf, and they hadn’t thought to change the seals on Duradh Mal. He never had, at least, and it seemed that the High Solaros hadn’t either.

  Who could have foreseen that the Baozites would want to revisit such a disastrous defeat, though? Or that they would find a way to reopen it? They fought wars; they weren’t scholars of dead magic.

  “I was not the only one interested in the ruins,” Malentir said. “There was a fool from the Fourfold House visiting Aluvair at the same time that I was. He, too, was interested in Blessed Erinai’s journals. His name was Gethel. A feeble old man, half dead by the looks of him. I considered him of no account. That might have been a mistake.

  “Shortly after I unsealed Ang’duradh, something … escaped. I dealt with it, but your comrades came upon me unexpectedly while I did. That distraction resulted in my visit to Heaven’s Needle, and I was away longer than I had intended.

  “While I was detained, it appears, Gethel came to Carden Vale and blundered into the unsealed fortress.” The Thornlord paused. A troubled look flickered across his face, and he folded his arms, pressing his wrists over his elbows. “I believe that he stumbled upon whatever the Gray Brothers used to kill Ang’duradh, and may have loosed it into Carden Vale. I suspect, too, that Gethel might have caused, or encouraged, the distraction that led to my absence. If so, he manipulated your people as well. That is why my mistress said our interests aligned. We share an enemy in this. Whatever it was that Gethel released, we all want to stop it.”

  “If you hadn’t broken the seals—” Kelland began.

  “If, if.” Malentir waved a hand dismissively. Barbed metal glinted in his sleeve. “Useless to wish for what might have been. If your fellows had not delayed me, I would have been able to stop him. But they did, and it is done. What matters is not what has happened, but what will.

  “My mistress instructed that you should have time to decide your course. I will leave you to discuss that while I tend to other matters. Upon my return, we will begin our work or part ways, as you choose.” He inclined his head, mockingly courteous, and left.

  “I’m for leaving,” Bitharn said as soon as the Thorn was gone. She leaned forward, frowning. “I don’t trust him, I don’t like him, and he’s said he’s after his own interests here. The only reason I dealt with the Thorns was to set you free. That’s done. It’s time for us to cut ourselves loose of their webs. Let him walk into Duradh Mal on his own.”

  “I can’t.” Kelland wanted to reach across the table for her hands. She was so close. A few inches. An arm’s reach.

  Easier if it had been a thousand leagues. He dropped his own hands into his lap, locking the fingers together. “I can’t leave them to suffer, Bitharn. The people of Carden Vale, the children stolen from Cailan … you know my oaths. I realize the Thorns are taking advantage of that, but it doesn’t change their need. I would be unworthy of Celestia’s blessing if I turned my back on them.”

  “You wouldn’t be turning your back on them. You’d be sending to Cailan for help.” She searched his face. Her eyes were wide and luminous and frightened; his heart ached that he couldn’t give her the answer she wanted. “We’ve been dancing to Ang’arta’s tune every step of this sorry dance. I want an end to it. I betrayed our temple to have you free. Was that for nothing?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “But I have to stay. I’m sorry.”

  “It isn’t fair. Your oaths bind you. Theirs don’t. They’ll always have the advantage.” She pulled a hand away and dashed it across her eyes, not quite quickly enough to hide the welling tears. “I only just got you back.”

  “I know,” Kelland said. “I’m grateful for that. I don’t know if I will ever be able to say how much.”

  Bitharn let out a shaky breath. “Then why are you letting them drag you back into their schemes?”

  “Because their schemes don’t matter. Put them out of your mind. If it were only you and I here, what would the right course be?” He reached out tentatively to touch her wrist, willing her to understand and to forgive him. “The evil in Duradh Mal is clear. I don’t want to help the Thorns any more than you do, but I can’t leave people to suffer because I’m afraid trying to stop it might give Ang’arta some advantage.”

  She rubbed her eyes again, scowling. “They matter. They’ll betray you again as soon as they have what they want, and what they want is bad enough on its own. If the Baozites had a foothold in these mountains—”

  “Then what? Yes, they’ll command the passes. Yes, they’ll have the valley locked behind rings of iron, just as they did in Ang’duradh’s day. But the world has changed since then. No one lives here, Bitharn, apart from the people in Carden Vale, and we are here to help them escape. Who will the Baozites dominate? The Jenje Plains have been desolate for centuries; the windlords’ kingdoms are turned to dust and blown away. We stand to the south. Us, and Calantyr strong behind us. We can keep them safely contained in the mountains.”

  “You hope,” Bitharn muttered.

  Kelland smiled. He couldn’t help it; her tone was exactly the one he’d heard so often when he’d embarked on some foolish scheme as a child, and, later, whenever he’d followed his heart rather than his head during their travels. It meant that she was resigned to his latest crusade … and would guard his back as he plunged into it. “All plans are founded on hope. The good ones are tempered with caution.”

  “No wonder I’m not convinced this is a good one.”

  She seldom was. That, too, made him smile. “Why not?”

  “Maybe the Celestians can keep them behind the mountains—maybe. At what cost? What if you’re wrong, and they fail? What happens to us, long before that’s a concern?” Bitharn tucked a loose strand of amber gold hair behind an ear. “I don’t like it. You can’t trust the Thorns.”

  “I don’t. It’s one of the reasons I’m so glad to have you.” He hadn’t meant to say that—but, having begun, Kelland plunged onward. “I shouldn’t have left you in Tarne Crossing.” He’d relived that day a thousand times in the dungeons of Ang’arta. Cold winter light on his shield, the breath brittle as ice in his lungs, the crimson spatter of blood on the snow. The shard of doubt in his soul, more lethal than any blade. All Kelland had to do was close his eyes and the memories were there, vivid as the day he’d lived them.

  “Kelland, I—”

  He took her hand, silently cursing his earlier hesitation. Her fingers clasped his, holding on so tightly that he felt a heartbeat pulsing through them. Hers or his, he couldn’t tell. “I need to
say this. Please. I shouldn’t have left you in Tarne Crossing. That morning, the only thing I could think of was the baker we’d found, and what the Thornlady had done to him. How badly he died. I couldn’t let that happen to you. I thought, if I went out alone, I might win and I might lose, but either way you would be safe. It was … stupid, I know it was stupid, but I was so afraid.

  “I failed because I tried to confront her alone, and because I was weakened by doubt.” He drew a breath. “What I am trying to say, clumsily, is that I need you with me. You make me stronger. You guard against the dangers I don’t see. I was a fool to forget that. By trying to keep you out of harm’s way, I only weakened myself and forced you into dealing with the Thorns. I am sorry. So sorry. And so very grateful to you.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. Tears were falling freely down her face, but she did not wipe them away.

  They sat in silence for a time. Kelland didn’t know what she was thinking; he struggled with his own turmoil, trying to find the words to bring some order to the confusion he’d wrestled with since leaving Ang’arta.

  “Before she let me go,” he said at last, “the Spider told me that Bysshelios was right—that chastity is not a mandate from our goddess.”

  Bitharn’s nose wrinkled immediately. She pulled away a little, green-flecked eyes narrowing. “Do you believe her?”

  “I don’t know,” Kelland confessed. “But I don’t think it matters.” He’d spent a long while pondering it, and although he had never found a clear way out of the maze of those thoughts, he’d fumbled toward something like an answer.

  Bysshelios, himself an Illuminer, had claimed that the Bright Lady was not as austere as the high priests claimed, and that her Blessed were permitted the joys of coupling. He had demonstrated this himself, publicly and graphically, several times; at the time the episodes had been well documented by scandalized witnesses. If their accounts were to be believed, he’d kept his powers afterward. Several of his adherents were Illuminers who had defected from the faith to join his schism. They, too, broke their oaths of chastity—and retained their divine gifts. For a time. As the years went by, Bysshelios granted himself ever-greater indulgences and privileges: he claimed that no wedding was sanctified in Celestia’s eyes unless he had lain with the bride himself first, and that no healing could be given unless the patient, or someone on the patient’s behalf, made a similar tithe to his faith. The tales of his abuses became so numerous and so vile that the Dome of the Sun could no longer overlook them, and finally the heresy had to be stamped out with sword and flame.