by Paul Kearney
Man’s hand, not God’s.
He broke open King Mark’s letter and stood on the pitching gallery reading it.
My Dear Cousin, it began. This is written in haste and without ceremony—the dispatch galley waits in the harbour with her anchor aweigh. Her destination is Abrusio, for I know not where else you can be reached. Despite the terrible stories which are coming out of Hebrion, I believe that you will arrive back in your capital in the end and eject the traitors and Ravens who are intent on ruining the west.
But I must tell you my news. My party was ambushed in the foothills of the southern Malvennors by a sizable force of unknown origin, and we barely scraped through with our lives. An assassination attempt, of course, an effort to rid the world of yet another heretic. It can only have been arranged by Cadamost of Perigraine and the Inceptine Prelate of that kingdom. I fear other attempts have been made, on both you and Lofantyr, but obviously if you are scanning this missive you survived.
The old laws which governed conduct and guided men’s actions are destroyed. I have had an uprising of the nobles in Astarac to deal with, and it is only in the last few days that I have been able to call Cartigella my own capital again. But the traitors were ill-led and ill-equipped—and they had no Knights Militant to back them up. The army, which remained loyal in the most part, thank God, is now scouring Astarac for the remaining pockets of the rebels. But there are rumours that Perigraine is mobilizing and I must guard my eastern frontiers, else you would have Astaran reinforcements to help you in the sorry task of regaining your own kingdom.
My sister will wed you, and if she is as plain as a frog she is nonetheless a woman of sense and intelligence. More than ever we heretic kings must stand together, Abeleyn. Hebrion and Astarac shall be allied, for if we remain separate then we will fall alone. I will not waste time on pomp and ceremony. As soon as I hear from you that you are safe in Abrusio she shall be sent to your side, the living proof of our bond.
(Do you remember her, Abeleyn? Isolla. You pulled her plaits as a boy and mocked her crooked nose.)
From Torunna I have tidings much the same as here. Macrobius has been properly received as the true Pontiff, but according to my sources he is not seen much abroad and may be ailing, may God forfend. He is all that stands between us and utter anarchy. Lofantyr is directing the Merduk war personally, and yet Ormann Dyke seems to be neglected and the refugees surround Torunn by the hundred thousand. He is not a general, our cousin of Torunna. Sometimes I am not even sure if he is a soldier.
I must scrawl ever more hastily, as the tide will soon be on the turn. A Fimbrian army, it is said, is on the march. Its destination is reported to be the dyke, which may explain Lofantyr’s neglect if it does not excuse it. He has hired the old empire-builders to fight his wars for him, and thinks he can leave it at that. But the hound brought in over the threshold can prove to be a wolf if it is not watched and given discipline. I do not trust Fimbrian open-handedness.
I end here. A pitiful missive, without grace or form to recommend it. My old rhetorics tutor will be grumbling in his grave. Maybe one day philosophers will once more have the time to dance angels on the heads of pins, but for now the world has too much need of soldiers and the quill must yield to the sword.
Fare thee well, cousin.
Mark
Abeleyn smiled as he finished reading. Mark had never been much of a one for polish. It was good to know that Hebrion did not stand alone in the world, and that Astarac seemed fairly on the road back to her proper order. The news of the Fimbrians was interesting, though. Did Lofantyr truly expect them to fight and die for Torunna in the east without wanting something more than coinage in exchange?
Isolla. They had all played together as children, at conferences and conclaves as their fathers changed the shape of the world. She was thin and russet-haired, with a freckled face and a bend to her nose that had been evident even then, when they were not yet into their teens. She was only a year or two younger than himself—quite old to be married for the first time. He remembered her as a quiet, long-suffering child who liked to be left alone.
Such memories were beside the point. The important thing was that the Hebro-Astaran alliance would be firmly cemented by this marriage, and personal feelings did not come into it.
(He thought of Jemilla and her swelling belly, and felt a thrill of uneasy apprehension for a reason he could not fully understand.)
The feeling passed. He went inside and shouted for attendants to come and help him disrobe and wash. He poured himself a flagon of wine from the gimballed decanters on the cabin table, gulped it down, bit into a chunk of herb bread, gulped more wine.
The cabin door opened and his personal steward and valet were standing there, still in their castaway clothes, one chewing.
“Sire?”
He felt ashamed. He had forgotten that these men had been through whatever he had, and were as hungry and thirsty and tired and filthy as he was himself.
“It’s all right. You are dismissed. Clean yourselves up and get yourselves as much food and wine as your bellies will hold. And kindly ask Admiral Rovero to step back in here when he has a moment.”
“Yes, sire. The sailors have heated water for you in one of their coppers in the galley. Shall we have a bath prepared?”
A bath! Sweet heavens above. But he shook his head. “Let the lady Jemilla use the water. I will do well enough.”
The men bowed and left. Abeleyn could smell himself above the usual shipboard smells of pitch and wood and old water, but it did not seem to matter. Jemilla was carrying his child, and she would appreciate a bath above all things at the moment. Let her have one—it would keep her away from him for a while.
He realized suddenly that he did not much like his mistress. As a lover she was superb, and she was as witty and intelligent as a man could want. But he trusted her no more than he would trust an adder which slithered across his boot in the woods. The knowledge surprised him somewhat. He was aware that something in him had changed, but he was not yet sure what it was.
A knock on the door. Admiral Rovero, his eyebrows high on his sea-dog face. “You wanted to see me, sire?”
“Yes, Admiral. Let us go through this plan you have concocted, you and Mercado, for the retaking of Abrusio. Now is as good a time as any.”
There was to be no rest, no chance to sit and stare out at the foaming wake and the mighty ships which coursed along astern, tall pyramids of canvas and wood and gleaming guns. No time to turn away from the care and the responsibilities. And Abeleyn did not mind.
Perhaps that is what has changed, he thought. I am growing into my crown at last.
TWENTY-TWO
A LBREC ’ S head was full of blood, swollen and throbbing like a bone-pent heart. His face was rubbing against some form of material, cloth or the like, and his hands, also, felt swollen and full.
He was upside-down, he realized, dangling with his midriff being crushed by his own weight.
“Put me down,” he gasped, feeling as though he might throw up if he did not straighten.
Avila set him down carefully. The young Inceptine had been carrying him slung over one broad shoulder. The pair of them were breathing heavily. Albrec’s world dizzied and spun for a moment as the fluids of his body righted themselves. The lamp Avila had been carrying in his free hand guttered on the floor, almost out of oil.
“What are you doing?” Albrec managed at last. “Where are we?”
“In the catacombs. I couldn’t bring you round, Albrec. You were dead to the world. So I piled up stone in front of the hole and tried to find a way out for us.”
“Commodius!”
“Dead, and may his warped spirit howl the eons away in the pits of hell.”
“His body, Avila. We can’t just leave it down here.”
“Why not? He was a creature of the lightless dark, a shape-shifter, and he tried to kill us both to protect his precious version of the truth. Let his corpse rot here unburied.”
Albrec held his aching head in his hands. “Where are we?”
“I was following the north wall—the damp one, as you said—trying to find the stairs, but I must have missed them somehow.”
“An easy thing to do. I will find them, don’t worry. How long has it been since . . . ?”
“Maybe half an hour, not long.”
“Great God, Avila, what are we going to do?”
“Do? I—I don’t know, Albrec. I hadn’t been thinking beyond getting out of this dungeon.”
“We’ve killed the Senior Librarian.”
“We’ve slain a werewolf.”
“But he changed back into Commodius the librarian. It’s the last thing I remember. Who will believe us? What signs are there on his body to tell anyone what he was in life?”
“What are you saying, Albrec? That we are in trouble for saving our own lives, for putting an end to that foul beast?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know what to think. How could it happen, Avila? How could a priest be a thing like that, all these years, all the years I have worked with him? It was he who haunted the library; I see that now. It was his unclean presence which gave it its atmosphere. Oh, lord God, what has been going on here?”
The pair were silent, their eyes fixed on the tiny lamp flame which did not have too many minutes of life left to it. But it did not seem important that they might soon be left here in impenetrable darkness. The place seemed different somehow. They had seen the true face of evil, and nothing else could frighten them.
“They know,” Albrec went on in a rasping whisper. “Did you hear him? They know the truth of things, the real story of the Saint and the Prophet, and they have been suppressing it. The Church has been sitting on the truth for centuries, Avila, keeping it from the world to safeguard its own authority. Where is piety, where humility? They have behaved like princes determined to hold on to their power no matter what the cost.”
Avila fingered his black Inceptine robe thoughtfully.
“You have claw marks down the sides of your face,” he told Albrec, as though he had only just seen them.
“There’s blood on yours, too.”
“We can’t hide our hurts, Albrec. Think, man! What are we to do? Columbar is dead at Commodius’ hand and Commodius is dead at ours. How will it look? We cannot tell them we were trying to discover and preserve the truth of things. They’ll put us out of the way as quickly as Commodius intended to.”
“There are good men yet in the Church—there must be.”
“But we don’t know who they are. Who will listen to us or believe us? Sweet blood of the Blessed Saint, Albrec, we are finished.”
The lamp guttered, flared, and then went out. The dark swooped in on them and they were blind.
Avila’s voice came thick with grief through the lightlessness. “We must flee Charibon.”
“No! Where would we go? How would we travel in the depth of winter, in the snows? We would not last a day.”
“We’ll not last much longer than that here once this gets out. When Commodius is missed they’ll search the library. They’ll find him in the end. And who is the only other person who has the keys to the library? You, Albrec.”
The little monk touched the torn skin of his face and neck, the lump on his forehead where the werewolf had knocked him. Avila was right. They would question him first, for he was Commodius’ closest colleague, and when they saw his wounds the inquisition would begin.
“So what are we to do, Avila?” he asked, near to tears. He knew, but he had to let someone else say it.
“We’ll have a day of grace. We’ll stay out of sight and gather together what we can to help us on our journey.”
“Journey to where? Where in the world are we to go? The Church rules Normannia, her Knights and clerics are in every city and town of the west. Where shall we run to?”
“We are heretics once this gets out,” Avila said. “They will excommunicate us when they find the body in that unholy chapel and note our disappearance. But there are other heretics in the world, Albrec, and there is a heresiarch to lead them. The man some say is Macrobius has been set up as an anti-Pontiff in Torunn. Charibon’s writ has no authority in that kingdom, and anyone hostile to the Himerian Church will be welcome there. The Macrobian kings will listen to us. We would be a powerful weapon in their armoury. And besides, Charibon seems now to me like a sink of corruption. If Commodius was a werewolf, could there not be others like him within the ranks of my order?”
“It does not bear thinking about.”
“It must be thought about, Albrec, if we are to puzzle out a way to save our lives.”
They stood awhile, not speaking, listening to the drip of water and the enfolding silence of the gutrock, the bowels of the mountains. Finally Avila moved. Albrec heard him groan from the pain of his hurts.
“My robe is ripped to threads, and I think I have some ribs broken. It is like a knife thrust into my side every time I draw breath. We must get back to our beds before Matins.”
“You sleep in a dormitory, Avila. Won’t your colleagues notice?”
“There is a bolster under my blankets doing service as a sleeping monk, and I stole out as quiet as a mouse. But I’ll not be so quiet returning. Damnation!”
“You can’t go back. You must come to my cell. We’ll get some things together and hole up somewhere tomorrow—or today, as I suppose it must be—and leave tomorrow night.”
Avila was gasping in short, agonizing pants. “I fear I will not be a swift traveller, my little Antillian comrade. Albrec, must we leave? Is there no way we can brazen it out?”
The decision had been made, but it terrified both of them. It would be so much easier to go on as if nothing had happened, to step back into the ancient routine of the monastery-city. Albrec might have done it, the inertia of fear tying him to the only life he had known. But Avila had painted things too clearly. The Antillian knew that their lives had changed without hope of recovery. They had stepped beyond the Church and were on the outside, looking in.
“Come,” Albrec said, trying not to move his neck. “We’ve a lot to do before dawn. This thing has been thrust on us as Honorius’ visions were thrust upon him, that poor, mad seeker after the truth. God has given us a burden as heavy as his to bear. We cannot shirk it.”
He took Avila’s arm and began leading him along the wall of the catacombs, touching its rough surface every now and then with his shaking palm.
“He died in the mountains, you know, died alone as a discredited hermit whom no one would listen to, a holy madman. I wonder now if it is not the Church which has been mad. Mad with pride, with the lust for power. Who is to say that it has not suppressed every holy truth-seeker who has arisen over the centuries? How many men have found out about Ramusio’s true fate, and have paid for that knowledge with their lives? That is the pity of it. Take a lie and make it into belief, and it rots the rest of the faith like a bad apple in a barrel. No one knows what to believe any more. The Church totters on its foundations, no matter how much of its structure may be sound, and those good men who are in its service are tainted with its lies.”
Avila groaned out a wrecked laugh. “You never change, Albrec. Still philosophizing, even at a time like this.”
“Our fate has become as important as the downfall of nations,” Albrec retorted humourlessly. “We carry our knowledge like a weapon of the Apocalypse, Avila. We are more potent than any army.”
“I wish I felt so,” Avila grated, “but I feel more like a wounded rat.”
They found the stairs and began to ascend them as gingerly as two old men, hissing and grimacing at every step. It seemed an age before they reached the library proper, and for the last time in his life Albrec walked among the tiers of books and scrolls and breathed in the dry parchment smell. The title page of the old document crackled in the breast of his robe like a grizzling babe.
The air of the passing night was bitterly cold as they left the library, locking it behind t
hem, and trudged through the wind-smoked snowdrifts to the cloisters. There were a few other monks abroad, preparing for Matins. Charibon was wrapped in pre-dawn peace, dark buildings and pale drifts, the warm gleam of candlelight at a few windows. It was different now. It no longer felt like home. Albrec was weeping silently as he helped Avila to his own cell. He knew that tonight whatever peace and happiness his plain life had known had been lost. Ahead lay nothing but struggle and danger and disputation, and a death which would occur beyond the ministrations of the Church. Death on a pyre perhaps, or in the snows, or in a strange land beyond all that was familiar.
He prayed to Ramusio, to Honorius the mad saint, to God Himself, but no light appeared before him, no voice spoke in his mind. His supplications withered into empty stillness, and try as he might he could not stop his faith from following them into that pit of loss. All he was left with was his knowledge of the truth, and there grew in him a resolve to see that truth spread and grow like a painful disease. He would infect the world with it ere he was done, and if the faith tottered under that affliction, then so be it.
C HARIBON came to life before the sun broke the black sky into slate-grey cloud. Matins was sung, and the monks went to their breakfasts; Lauds, and then Terce followed. The accumulated snows of the night were swept away and the city stirred, as did the fisher-villages down on the frozen shore of the Sea of Tor.
After Terce a group of scholars went to one of the Justiciars and complained that the library was not yet open. The matter was investigated, and it was found that the doors were locked and there were no lights within. The Senior Librarian could not be found, nor could his assistant. The matter was pursued further, and despite the frigid air a crowd of monks gathered around the main doors of the Library of Saint Garaso when at Sext they were broken open by a deacon of the Knights Militant and his men using a wooden beam as a battering ram whilst Betanza, the Vicar-General himself, looked on. The library was searched by parties of senior monks. By that time the body of Columbar had been discovered, and despite searches of the dormitories and cloisters the two librarians were still nowhere to be found. Charibon began to buzz with speculation.