The Killing Light

by Myke Cole

  “Where are we?” Samson whispered.

  “You are in the center of the world.” Heloise could hear Tone working a mechanism, and a locking bar falling into place inside the doors. “You are in the heart of all you have ever known. And soon you will meet your savior.”

  10

  SACRED THRONE

  Like the ranger, the wizard is a solitary creature, plying his trade in darkness, away from the light of the Emperor’s grace, and from the gaze of those who might cry out to us. While this makes the work of finding them harder, it is fortunate. For if but one wizard might rend the veil enough to let a devil through, I shudder to think of what two or three together might do.

  —Letter from Brother Witabern to the Secretary of the Pentarchy

  The doors shuddered. Heloise could hear the faint scratching of claws. She leaned back, braced the machine against the doors, realized it wasn’t needed. The massive portal was at least as heavy as the city gate, the shuddering gentle. The scratching reached her ears faintly, muffled by the thick stone, but also by something else, a closeness in the air around her. Whatever mechanism Tone had engaged was holding for now.

  Heloise stepped away from the door, trying to take in her surroundings, but her eyes stubbornly refused to adjust to the darkness. She squinted hard, but the black was so complete that she had to blink to make certain her eyes were open. “Xilyka?”

  “I’m here, Heloise.” The Hapti knife-caster’s voice was muffled, as if she were speaking through a scrim of cotton. Hearing Xilyka’s voice pushed some of the fear down.

  “Can you make a light? I can’t…”

  “I have it.” Tone’s voice came from some distance away. “Your tinder will not catch in here.”

  Heloise heard the scraping of flint and steel, and a small flame blossomed. By its soft light, she could see Tone at the base of another set of stairs, so broad their edges were swallowed by the darkness. The tiny light illuminated only the space just around him, leaving Heloise and the rest of them in the pitch black.

  “It’s not enough to…”

  “Wait.” Tone held up a hand.

  Heloise waited as long as she could stand, opened her mouth to speak again.

  The flame danced, sparked, spread. It seemed to follow tendrils in the air, twining and untwining and then breaking apart until it danced about them, like a storm of fireflies clustering overhead. The flickering light fell on all of them, lighting the huge space brighter than a dozen torches. Heloise felt herself smiling as she looked up to see tiny motes dancing above their heads. They drifted as they burned, bouncing against new motes, kindling them. They lit and burned, lit and burned, and Heloise felt the gentle sprinkle of ash as it fell around her. It was as if they stood beneath a billowing cloud of tiny burning stars, a night sky on fire just above them.

  “Only the sacred oil can light the nave,” Tone said.

  “It’s beautiful,” Heloise said.

  “It is but a taste,” Tone said. “The Emperor is the light of the world.”

  The room was smaller than Heloise had thought, dominated by a wide spread of stairs rising up to another set of doors, smaller cousins of the ones they’d just entered. These smaller doors were made entirely of gold, their faces chased with the image of two Palantines in the traditional pose. Above the Palantines’ heads were etched two halves of a throne, joining at the seam between the doors.

  Two ancient Sojourners sat before the golden doors, so thin that Heloise at first thought them skeletons. One of them shifted, his ragged red cloak shaking off dust. The edges of the old fabric were trimmed in a silver pattern that mimicked chains. The man stood, leaning on his flail, more crutch than weapon, and extended a hand to them, palm out.

  “I am the Emperor’s Left Gate. Who comes to stand in the shadow of the Throne?”

  “I am Brother Tone, the Emperor’s Own.” Tone mounted the bottom step and inclined his head.

  “Brother, not Father?” the Left Gate asked. “Come closer; my eyes are not what they once were.”

  Heloise was shocked. Was the Sacred Throne truly beyond those doors? The seat of the Emperor Himself?

  Xilyka caught Heloise’s expression, and the corner of her mouth lifted. “Something wrong?”

  “It’s just … to guard the Sacred Throne itself … just a couple of old men sitting in the dark.”

  Xilyka chuckled. “It’s always old men with you villagers. It’s all you will have to lead you.”

  The doors shuddered gently behind her, and she could hear a whooshing and then a thud as one of the siege engines fired a bolt down into the devils. An eagle-scream told her the missile had found its mark. The doors ceased trembling. “Will these doors hold?”

  Samson looked up at them. “They’ll have to. Nothing in here to brace them with.”

  “They will not need bracing,” Tone said as he moved up the steps. “The Emperor Himself will help us soon.” He continued approaching until the Sojourner stopped beckoning with a withered hand. He was so close that the old man could have reached out and touched him.

  “Your cloak”—the Left Gate squinted—“is gray. Where is your chapter father? Did he send you under his seal?”

  “Father Harace,” Tone said, “stands at the Emperor’s right hand now. The chapter is scattered, and I will appeal to the Throne for an elevation.”

  “That is why you are here, to make your case that you should be raised up?” The Left Gate sounded angry. “Have you forgotten the command of the Writ? Pride…”

  “… is the Emperor’s alone,” Tone finished. “I know the words, Holy Father. I do not seek the elevation for myself. That is to the Pentarchy to decide, if they still live. I saw many red cloaks among the dead at the gate, and at least one trimmed with gold.”

  The Left Gate frowned. “What dead?”

  Tone gestured at the shut doors, seamless in the gloom. They were still and quiet for now, as the devils regrouped from the siege engine’s missiles, Heloise guessed. But even if the devils had been pounding on them, she doubted the ancient Sojourners would have been able to tell. “The veil is rent, Holy Father. The devils are here. That is why I have come, to appeal to the Sacred Throne for aid.”

  Heloise thought of the thick silence in the room, the unyielding dark. Anyone here would be ignorant of what happened outside, but only if they never left.

  “The Emperor speaks through me,” the Left Gate said. “If the devils were here, I would know.”

  Heloise’s frustration boiled over. “They are here! They are beating on the doors of this place right now! Enough of this, we have to…”

  Tone cut her off with a glare.

  “Who is that?” The Left Gate squinted down at Heloise.

  “She is a villager—the Emperor’s instrument,” Tone said. “When the devils would have taken me, she delivered me. She took me through them and into the city. She must come with me before the Throne.”

  “A villager? I deny her and you, Pilgrim. You may not pass. We have admitted only Pentarchs for as many winters as I can recall.”

  “How many winters can you recall, Holy Father?” Tone asked. “The veil is rent, I do not have time for formality now. Stand aside. I am going before the Throne.”

  The Left Gate’s pale face turned even paler. “You dare! You will be cast out of the Order! You will be made heretic! Your life and soul shall be—”

  “All our lives and souls are forfeit should the devils win through, Holy Father,” Tone said. “Stand aside.”

  The other Sojourner rose slowly to his feet, leaned heavily on his flail. “I have heard enough. Spears! To me! Take this heretic in irons!”

  Heavy silence swallowed his words.

  “Spears! Spears…” His voice trailed off.

  “I am sorry, Holy Father.” Tone sounded stricken. “They are all … gone.”

  “What do you mean…” The Right Gate sagged against his flail.

  The doors vibrated. Heloise heard the faint screeching of claws agai
nst stone.

  “Tone,” she said, “there is no time!”

  Tone sighed and nodded. “I am sorry.” It took Heloise a moment to realize he wasn’t speaking to her.

  He strode to the golden doors. Both Gates threw themselves at him, but the ancient men were barely able to hold themselves up. Tone gently disentangled the Left Gate, pressed him back down into his chair. The Right Gate beat his withered fists uselessly on Tone’s back, his flail head jingling over his shoulder. Finally he too sank back into his chair, exhausted. “Your soul,” he panted, “is damned.”

  “Aye, Holy Father,” Tone said as he pulled the first door open, “and I will pray to the Emperor for deliverance.”

  Heloise realized that she had stopped breathing, forced herself to suck down air. Barnard sank to his knees, and she could hear her father’s muttered prayers. The door, unlocked, swung smoothly open. There was no clap of thunder, no bolt of light. Just a door moving on well-oiled hinges, like any other. Perhaps this wasn’t the right door. Perhaps it was an antechamber, and the Sacred Throne was further beyond.

  Heloise squinted. There was no thick darkness behind the golden doors. The massive chamber inside was lit from above with a gray half-light. The floor was thick with dust, broken only by a few footsteps trailing off out of view.

  Heloise took a step, pulled along as surely as if a rope were tied to the machine. She was terrified by the prospect of seeing the Emperor, but the burning curiosity, the sudden spike of hope, was too strong to deny.

  Barnard got to his feet, and Samson took a step with her.

  “Back!” the Left Gate shouted, but his voice was weak from the effort of trying to stop Tone. “None of you may come before the Sacred Throne!” It is no antechamber. Heloise’s heart fluttered, leapt. It is the Throne, and I am about to see it.

  Tone turned back, beckoned to her. “Just the girl.”

  Xilyka, Samson, and Barnard shook their heads in unison. “She is not going anywhere alone with you,” the Hapti girl said.

  Heloise quieted them with a gesture. “We will leave the door open.”

  The two Gates looked up in awe as she approached close enough for their weak eyes to see. “Sacred Throne protect us.”

  “Your eminence … Heloise, please!” Barnard voice’s was thick through his tears. “Take me with you! Let me see…”

  “Come on, Heloise.” Tone beckoned to her.

  The palace doors shook gently once again, went still.

  Heloise turned back to the doorway, but not before she saw Samson’s steadying hand on Barnard’s shoulder, holding him back.

  “At least…” Barnard sobbed, “at least tell me if my children are there. Tell me if they stand in the Shadow of the Throne. Tell them how much I love them.”

  “And Leuba,” Samson added, his voice breaking. “I’d like to see her if I could, one more time.”

  The few remaining villagers added other names, children and spouses lost. Heloise did not listen. Her mind trembled as she confronted what she was about to see, and she was sure that to add the weight of their expectations would crush her utterly. “Guard the main doors,” she said, if only to give them something to do. “Put your bodies against them.”

  Beyond the golden doors was the Emperor himself, whom she had been raised to worship, whose Writ had guided her life. She had faced devils from hell, she had fought against armies that outnumbered her ten-to-one. Still, at the thought of finally approaching the Throne, her knees shook so badly that she wondered if she would be able to move the machine forward.

  She remembered her speech at Lyse, the one her father had quoted to her on the way to the capital, repeated it to herself. Just one more impossible thing. With that thought, some of her strength returned, and she ducked the machine low, walking carefully through the golden doors.

  The room beyond stank of dust and mildew, of rotting mortar and wet stone. All was cast in a thin gray half-light, filtering down from a circle of dirty windows in a huge cupola that capped the room hundreds of feet above her, perched atop decrepit stone ribs, hung with tendrils of long-dead moss. She let her eyes drift down to take in the room, so vast and empty that she felt a brief sense of vertigo. Dust carpeted the floor, stuck to the walls.

  She glanced around for anything to break the emptiness and finally found it—a pedestal in the center, reached by three steps, plain stone worn smooth and concave over time. Atop them sat a throne of simple gray stone, speckled with tiny flakes of moldering gold paint, still clinging to the surface despite the ravages of eons, caked with dust and mold.

  It was empty.

  Heloise wasn’t sure what she should have expected. She had always pictured the Emperor as he was described in the stories—a stern-faced man in golden armor, shield and hammer in his hands. Could he be something else? Something she couldn’t see?

  Heloise had no idea, but she was sure of one thing: if this was the Sacred Throne then the Writ had lied. It did not glow with the holy radiance of the divine presence. The souls of her beloved dead did not stand in its shadow; indeed the whole room was so cloaked in shadows that it was impossible to tell which one was cast by the throne. Her mind desperately fumbled for an explanation, an expectation that any moment the Emperor would make himself known to her.

  But no, she could feel it. There was nothing, the room was truly empty. No holy presence occupied the space, no blessed odor scented the air. There was only the rot, the dust, the detritus of years. A simple chair as ancient and moldering as the men just outside the doors who’d been set to guard it.

  Rage and grief warred within her. They tricked us. They had groveled to the Order for nothing. There was no Emperor, no great power to fall on them if they disobeyed. Only this moldering, ancient city, barely defended, its rich inhabitants hiding behind their leaded-glass windows, its most sacred spaces guarded by withered old men.

  She thought of Barnard and her father outside. What could she tell them? That everything they believed, every rule they lived by, was a lie?

  She looked over at Tone and could see that he, too, felt the truth. The Pilgrim stood silently staring at the throne. As Heloise watched, his flail fell from his limp fingers to clatter in the dust on the floor. He gave no sign that he’d even noticed, sank slowly to his knees, letting out a muffled sob, shoulders shaking.

  Heloise was shocked that after all he had done, the sight of his grief tugged at her, calling on her to comfort him.

  “Perhaps … perhaps he has moved to another chamber,” Heloise ventured, but she felt the yawning gulf in her gut, knew it wasn’t true. Still, her mind scrambled for a reason to believe. No. It can’t be. The devils are real, so the Emperor must be real as well.

  But if he was, he was gone from this stretch of empty dust. He would not be coming to their aid. Not today. Heloise swallowed the rage, the doubt, the boiling questions. If the Emperor was a lie, the devils were not, and they were still outside the palace gates, in possession of the city. If her father, the villagers, the city’s cowering residents, if any of them were to live long enough to grapple with the truth of the Emperor, the devils had to be defeated. Heloise was grateful for the thought. Even a task as great as defeating an army of devils was simpler than facing the questions that mounted until she thought her mind could not contain them all.

  “Tone,” Heloise called to the Pilgrim, “what about the Congregation of the Faithful? Where is it? How do we find them?”

  But Tone only knelt and wept. She strode to him, nudged him with the machine’s knee. He shrugged the touch off, gave her no answer.

  “There is no time! Where is the Congregation?” Nothing. She considered thumping him with the corner of her shield, but what good would it do? She could not beat the words from him. Somewhere deep within her, a cry was welling up, a bubble of sick horror at the lie she had been told, had believed. A part of her demanded that she stop and grapple with the truth she had witnessed.

  She pushed the thought away. Later. The devils were real and
they were outside the palace doors. She would deal with them first. The thought of having to speak with her father and Barnard and the rest of the villagers terrified her.

  And so when she left Tone and returned to the antechamber, she did not meet their eyes, motioned instead to Xilyka, jerked her chin back toward the Pilgrim. “Bring him.”

  Xilyka alone still stood at the foot of the stairs leading to the golden doors. She didn’t question the order, just ducked her head and darted through the doors, emerging with Tone a moment later. The Pilgrim was still weeping, head hanging. He went as meekly as a child, Xilyka leading him by the hand, his flail left behind.

  But Samson, Barnard, and Wolfun all raced from where they had stood with their backs bracing the palace doors. “What did you see?”

  They lied to us. She wanted to weep. All our lives, they lied to us. We didn’t have to Knit Hammersdown. We didn’t have to hurt anyone. All we needed to do was stand up to them, and we didn’t.

  But instead Heloise shook her head. “Nothing. The Emperor is not here.”

  Barnard rushed forward, and Heloise moved the war-machine to block his path. She thought of what Leahlabel had said when they had left the Sindi camp to seek out the war-machine, one of the few times Heloise had been outside it since they had ambushed the Order. Men have ever been weak. The same loss that makes a woman into a Mother and leader of a band will drive a man mad. They shrink from pain. Could you imagine one of them having to bear a child? This is why all mothers strive to spare their sons from grief. It takes so little to break them.

  Tears sparkled on Barnard’s cheeks as he tried to get around her. “Please, your eminence. I have to…”

  “No, Barnard. It will only hurt you more.”

  “Please!” he shouted, dodging left, then right. But Heloise had grown skilled at handling the machine’s controls, and she matched his movements until Barnard was forced to stagger back.

  He sank to his knees, weeping. “At least … at least tell me if you saw Gunnar and Basina. Tell me if you saw my children…” Behind him, Heloise could see Guntar holding his mother, sobbing into his shoulder.