“Pursuing a foul quest, turning anyone who gets in her way into animals,” Tobias growled. “It is vitally important that I find her—to stop her, and to save any of her victims that I can. Tell me quickly: what did you tell her, and where has she gone.” He slammed a jingling sack full of coins down on the table. “Your help will not go unrewarded.”
Clay had gotten to feeling quite a bit less awful by the time he stumbled out of the Thorny Tankard and into the muggy night air. Yes, the inebriation helped, but there was more to it than that. After all, he’d gone in with every intention of drinking until he passed out, and here he was staggering along home under his own power, still coherent enough to find his way by lantern light while singing a quiet tune to himself even if it was a funeral dirge. He almost felt heroic, knowing now it was an evil witch he’d fed lies to before taking her money.
In fact, he was sure he’d sensed it in her all along. Clever man that he was, he’d seen through the witch’s disguise and sent her off on a wild goose chase, buying time for the pursuing prince to catch up and bring her to justice. Forget “almost”; he was a hero. What’s more, he was a rich hero. He’d slain the monster, and he’d walked away with his pockets bulging with silver. Better still, it was starting ever so gently to rain.
Truly, it had been an un-bad day.
Clay was approaching the gate to the graveyard—on his way past to the cottage where he slept—when he saw the human skull lying in the path. It hadn’t been there when he’d headed down to the Tankard, and no one but him would have had any proper business using the path between that time and this…but there it sat, neatly on the ground before the gate, like a dog waiting patiently on the stoop for some kind soul with a proper set of hands to come along and let it inside.
Clay stood, scratching his head, a little corner of his drink-addled brain filling up with ghost stories. Here it was, past the witching hour, on a misty, starless night—and he found himself standing alone, face-to-face with a skull that had no business being there, staring into its empty eye sockets.
How did those stories go again? If you weren’t the hero, by the time you ran into something like this, your fate had already been sealed. If you ignored the warning, you were a fool, and whatever was lurking would cut you down. If you turned and fled, you were a coward, and whatever was lurking would chase you down. But he was the hero, wasn’t he? At least for today? So what would a hero do?
Clay spent a few seconds frowning down at the skull before finally turning to unlatch the gate and swing it gently open. “All right, then,” he addressed the skull, in a voice emboldened by drink. “In with you. No sense you wandering around out here all night.”
Whether surprisingly or unsurprisingly, the skull failed to move. Then the snort of a horse in the darkness drew Clay’s attention into the graveyard, and he saw red—the bold, billowing sort of red that stands out in lantern light against a black velvet night and screams for attention. This specific red took the form of long, flowing cloak draped around the shoulders of what was almost certainly a woman, although the red wouldn’t actually let Clay take his eyes off of it long enough to explore the shadows beneath.
“Oh. Was, this…yours, then?” Clay asked, dry-mouthed, with a meaningful, sideways glance toward the skull.
Anyone standing about outside the graveyard that night would have testified they’d seen a whip lash silently out from the gates to twine about Clay’s throat and drag him inward. Then they’d say they heard the lantern smash and the gates clang shut as the night went black. There being no actual witnesses to the event, all the townsfolk could say to the next important visitor who came calling for Clay Ambleforth was that he’d disappeared in the night, leaving behind no clue but a smashed lantern just inside the graveyard.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Call to Serve
“Best of luck with your pilgrimage, sister!” Dame Eleanor bid a cheerful farewell as Elissa ducked her head to climb out of the coach. Their third benefactor since they’d fled Denecia, the elderly gentlewoman had proven keen on theological discussion during the ride.
She’d insisted that her captive audience satisfy her curiosity about such diverse riddles as, “How many demons can dance on the head of a penitent?” (”Probably twelve.”), “If Seriena can do anything, does that mean she can make a brittlebeet stew so tasty you wouldn’t have to hold your nose to choke it down?” (”I’d certainly think so.”), and, “When the Inquisition’s finally taken care of all the witches, do you think maybe they could do something about this ghastly weather?” (”I’ll put it to the Grand Inquisitrix when I see her.”)
In fact, the only definitive answer Elissa had to offer any of her questions was to how the women of heathen lands managed to bear children without Seriena’s blessing of fertility. That one had actually been covered in a respected but obscure text she’d read, in which Seriena had mercifully shared her blessing of fertility with the unbelievers of the world; the catch being that if they were going to behave like uncivilized beasts, she would treat them like uncivilized beasts.
Rather than hang about to answer their prayers on a case by case basis, she made them settle for the same sort of blessing as the beasts, meaning anytime that they, well…did it…they just might wind up carrying their lover’s child whether they’d meant to or not. That story had been new to Keely as well as to the owner of the carriage, and all three women agreed that it sounded like a dreadful and cruel business, especially to the child.
In the end, though, Dame Eleanor had seemed suitably impressed with the breadth of Elissa’s vague and non-committal knowledge by the time she dropped them off at the crossroads, and they stood waving at her carriage until it had disappeared around a scraggly hedgerow.
“I should really have let you answer her questions,” Elissa said, rummaging through her satchel to find her sandals, and slipping them on. “I don’t think anyone would’ve had real answers for most of them, and you give non-answers with so much more conviction than I can.”
The satchel had shown up at the same time as the sandals, and Elissa no longer asked Keely where she got anything from. The truth was, she couldn’t afford to care, so she’d started placating her conscience with the observation that Keely really did prefer to take things from people who might never even miss them. After a few weeks on the road with absolutely no resources other than those which Keely managed to procure for them, Elissa’s conscience had simply gone silent on the whole matter, and accepted that this was the way things worked now.
“Don’t be silly,” Keely said dismissively. “There couldn’t have been a better time for you to practice, and I still say you’ve got the makings of an excellent liar. All we have to do is polish off the rough edges.”
“Please tell me you were born without scruples.” Elissa sighed. “It’ll give me hope that I’ll still have some left when all this is over.”
“When all this is over, Jenny, you’ll be able to afford all the scruples you care to buy.” Keely grinned as they set off down the road, away from the route the carriage was taking.
“My name’s still Elissa,” Elissa said with a despairing sigh, then she stopped, staring off into the distance. “I think we’re here,” she said, pointing. Beyond a dry, thorny bramble that passed for a hedgerow in this part of the world, a chalky white spire of rock stood alone against a backdrop of forested hills midway through the act of trading its summer green coat for one of brilliant autumn red, accented with flecks of gold.
The northern slope of the spire rose in a graceful arc—climbing slowly at first, then more and more steeply as it neared the peak—while the southern slope fell away precipitously from top to bottom. A stone that got dropped off that side of the peak would surely hit something on the way down, but would just as surely bounce away and continue its journey rather then find a place to rest.
About two thirds of the way up the less severe slope, scaffolding and partial stone walls testified to some sort of construction or reconstruction
underway on the spire.
"So, now what?" Elissa asked. "I'm still really vague on step two of your master plan."
"This would be step seven," Keely said. "Do keep up, Jenny."
"I'm still really vague on step seven, then."
"Step seven is finding the Grimm Truth.”
“You couldn’t perhaps be just a bit more vague, could you?” Elissa asked archly.
“I mean,” said Keely, “we track down a book that someone who wanted to could believe was the Grimm Truth when she saw it from a distance—something old and musty and important looking, perhaps a bit on the holy side.”
"You could have told me we needed a decoy back when I had a whole library full of them to choose from." Elissa sighed.
"By the time I knew we'd need a decoy, we were already on the run,” Keely said. “We’re smack in the middle of it now, and there’s no time for crying over missed opportunities, is there? Just improvise. Where would you start looking for an old book?”
“Hard to think of any place better than an abbey,” Elissa said.
“True,” Keely conceded. “Which means that the Inquisition is probably already swarming over any abbey within a day of this place. If you’ve got any less obvious ideas, I’d like to hear them.”
They walked on for a while in silence. “It only has to look right from a distance?” Elissa asked finally.
Keely nodded. “And not for long. It’s to be a prop in a play, in a manner of speaking.”
“Then for go’ss sake, just find the county market and take me shopping!” Elissa laughed.
“What? You think I have money?” Keely smirked.
“I think you’re a woman on a mission, who is going to beg, borrow, or steal whatever she needs to get it accomplished—mostly steal, and mostly from victims who’re going to say, ‘thank you,’ and then invite you around for supper after. And you need to take me shopping because, postulant or not, I was a librarian at Belgrimm. I’ve handled some of the oldest manuscripts in the world—and I bind books.”
It turned out that the county market lay mercifully close by—less than an hour’s walk down the road—in the less mercifully named little town of Weasel Gap, nestled in the shadow of a small stone castle atop a rocky hill. Rocky, in fact, seemed the order of the day, with the land immediately around the town suitable only for grazing animals and some haphazardly arranged orchards—not cultivated fields.
Westward past the town, the locals seemed to have given up on trying even to do that, cultivating only one of their thorny hedgerows to keep livestock from wandering into the ancient, shadowy forest beyond. A cannonball launched in that direction from the ramparts of the castle would probably have gotten into a fight with some five-hundred-year-old tree over who had a right to occupy that particular bit of space.
Nothing much recommended Weasel Gap as a site to build a town, except that the hill offered a reasonable place to put a castle, which then offered a reasonably protected place for craftsmen to set up business within a reasonable distance of all the outlying farming villages in the county.
“The tricky part,” said Elissa as they wandered among a selection of little shops and stalls that one accustomed to the splendor of Serylia could most charitably think of as “disappointing”, “is going to be finding proper metal fittings. They probably still use parchment out here, which is good for making an ‘old’ book out of, but either way, no one’s getting close enough to tell, right?”
“If they do, we’ve got other things to worry about,” Keely said.
“So a couple of boards, some leather, a nice dark stain for the leather…I can handle everything but the metal bits. We’ll need those pre-made. But if we can find someone who deals in odds and ends, they might have…”
Elissa trailed off as she looked up to find a roundish, gray-haired fellow sitting on a donkey a few paces away, watching her with a patient-but-expectant—and slightly nervous—little smile, through a pair of pince-nez spectacles. His attire marked him at once as a member of the respectable middle class, and the ornamental arch inscribed on the craftsman’s medallion around his neck hinted at his occupation.
“Ah, sister,” he said, once he’d seen he’d caught her eye. “My apologies for putting you to the inconvenience of finding me. I was, in fact, just on my way to the castle with the ledgers.”
“You…were?” Elissa asked, for want of any other ideas on how she should respond.
“Oh, straight-away,” he assured her, dismounting a bit clumsily to rummage through the donkey’s load until he’d produced a pair of well-worn books. “I was only delayed by a small emergency at the construction site. We can’t allow any more setbacks, can we, after all that’s happened? Speaking of which, as long as you’ve taken the trouble of coming to meet me…” He shoved the ledgers into Elissa’s arms. “…I’ll entrust them to you and return to my work. Far too much to be done, and the days are growing shorter.”
“Oh, ummm…Fine,” Elissa said, running her fingertips thoughtfully over the metal fittings of the top book.
“Thank you, Sister. And good day to you.” The man tipped his hat respectfully and clambered back onto his donkey.
“Well,” Elissa mused as she watched him ride away, “that was easy. Although it’ll still need some serious work before anyone mistakes either of these for an ancient holy text. I’d hoped we could find something fancier for the metal bits, too.”
“We’ll see,” Keely grinned. “But for now these books have more important job than playing decoy. They’re going to make us an introduction.”
“And what are we going to do with this introduction?” Elissa asked quietly, clutching the books to her chest as they lingered outside the great hall of the castle, waiting to be announced.
“Haven’t a clue,” Keely whispered, shrugging and biting her lip. “Well, that’s not strictly true, but you don’t think I planned this bit, do you? Every introduction presents an opportunity, and we’re going to need all the opportunities we can get.”
At that point, the doors to the great hall swung open, and the man who’d asked them to wait there slipped out, but he just shook his head as they straightened up expectantly. “I’m sorry, Sister,” he apologized to Elissa, “it sounds like they’ll be a while.”
Elissa just nodded understandingly as the man moved on, but Keely furtively caught the doors before they had swung entirely shut, and casually propped them open a crack to spy on what promised to be an interesting conversation.
“Tosh! You can’t seriously suggest that I go and tell the Angelis that Mother Church has been brought to her knees by the ghost of Weasel Gap!” a short but imposingly stocky woman bellowed, brandishing a gnarled old walking stick.
“Oh, my…” Elissa’s jaw dropped as she peered past Keely and through the crack in the doors to stare at the speaker and her ornately trimmed golden robes. “Keely, let’s just get out of here while we can. Trying to pass myself off as a priestess to a real priestess would be bad enough, but to a pontifine?”
“Oh, just relax and let me listen,” Keely shushed her. “You’ll do fine.”
“Technically, Your Grace, she’s considered the ghost of the Crimson Forest.” Despite his considerable height and broad, muscular shoulders, the man seemed much less imposing at the moment than the woman beside him did.
“She’s a band of bloody vandals is what she is, Haywood. Or do you buy into this heathen nonsense yourself?”
“Certainly not, Your Grace!” he answered indignantly. “But there is something…unholy…about the site.”
“And what does one do about unholy ground, Haywood?” she demanded.
The man fumbled helplessly for an answer.
“You there!” the pontifine snapped as she spun about to face the doors where Keely and Elissa stood. “Whichever postulant is lurking at the door, come in here girl, and tell us what you do about unholy ground!”
Keely slapped Elissa’s hand lightly to stop her from reaching for the door. “Keep you
r head, Sister,” Keely reprimanded quietly. “She caught a glimpse of my blue robes.”
With her head bowed in a demeanor of respectful subservience, Keely pushed the doors open wide enough to slip through.
“What do you do?” the pontifine demanded again.
“You, ummm…consecrate it, Your Grace?” Keely ventured uncertainly.
“See!” the pontifine declared, triumphantly banging her walking stick on the head table as she turned back to the original conversation. “Every postulant knows, and so would you if you ever attended services, Haywood. You consecrate it. And what could be more sacrosanct than a cathedral?
“We don’t need another diocese in the heartland, Haywood,” she said. “We need a diocese out here to deal with just this sort of nonsense. This cathedral has got to be built and it’s going to be built, and if you can’t control the heathen rabble long enough to get the job done, I’m sure King Gannon can find someone who can manage his lands properly.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” the man answered, tight-lipped.
“So who have we here?” the pontifine asked, beckoning both Keely and Elissa forward. “Why haven’t you introduced us, Haywood?”
“This is the first I’ve seen of them myself, Your Grace,” the man answered.
Elissa curtsied, mustering herself to play the priestess properly and take charge of the situation from her supposed postulant. “Sister, er…” She coughed, pointedly clearing her throat to cover the stumble. “Sister Jenny of Brookshire, Your Grace,” she said, “and my charge is the postulant Chloe.”
The pontifine scowled, peering closely at Elissa’s face. “You’re awfully young for a priestess.”
“I hear that a lot, Your Grace. A happy circumstance for me that my looks are deceiving,” Elissa answered so smoothly and with such a sociable smile that Keely had to fight to repress a grin. The girl was learning fast.
“Are they now,” the pontifine harrumphed. “At least you seem to be training your postulant up right. You’re in the presence of Pontifine Augusta, and this would be Lord Darby, Earl of Haywood. What business brings you here?”
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 13