by Scott Hale
“A world that does not know god knows only devils. The continent turned its back on god for the Disciples of the Deep and what has it received in return? The genocide of Geharra. The Red Worm of Gallows. Abominations pouring out of the Nameless Forest. Arachne in the Heartland. The eruption of Kistvaen. The Slavering Impostor in the South, who, because It can do godly things, has convinced the heretical Disciples It is a god.
“It is you who are Cathedra. It is you who are Penance. It is you who are the Holy Order. It is you, for all your faults and sins, who are The Way. The world is changing. The familiar may be swept away, just as easily as your town has become lost to the snow, but you are the fires that will bring the thaw. And with the thaw, after fighting to survive so long, our beliefs will bloom, and once and for all, the world will become god’s garden.”
Felix laughed and pointed. “If you don’t believe me, look around you. Together, today, you melt the snow and ice.”
It was true: there were so many people in attendance that the combined body temperature was more potent than the distant and dim sun. Winter’s blanket was unraveling; beyond its icy threads, Cathedra came through.
“You have heard rumors that the Holy Order has taken in the leaders of the Marrow Cabal, and this is true.”
Collectively, Cathedra gasped. They knew the name, but who didn’t? What concerned Felix was the way the mood shifted. He could see an emotional wave washing over them. They still held a grudge against the rebellion, if for nothing else than the burning of Carpenter Plantation.
“The Marrow Cabal rightfully destroyed Carpenter Plantation. It was a breeding ground for the vermillion veins, and an integral part of King Edgar’s attempts to summon the Impostor. If the Plantation had been destroyed sooner, perhaps we wouldn’t find ourselves in the situation we are in today…”
Cathedra quieted. A heavy dose of spiritual guilt dampened their spirits. Feet stopped stomping. Everyone got in line.
“Over the years, the Marrow Cabal has made every effort to thwart the Disciples of the Deep. When the Red Worm was slain by the group in Gallows, it became clear to the Mother Abbess and myself that god was giving us a message. The Marrow Cabal were our allies.
“But as you’ve heard, the Marrow Cabal was led by a devil, not unlike the southward beast. The Skeleton is gone. The Marrow Cabal is no longer enslaved to the madman’s will. They seek, they want, and need god. They have sworn themselves and all they know to us. Unlike the Disciples, we do not need abominations, like the Arachne, to fill our ranks. We are a religion of the people, and it is through people, not monsters, that we grow and prosper.”
Felix stopped himself. His throat burned from the mucus dripping down it. The vestments and the fatty material inside hugged him tighter, until he felt what seemed like suction on his skin. He glanced over his shoulder. Blinking out the snow in his eyes, he saw his guard, but no Mother Abbess. He had assumed she would’ve been there, watching and listening, as she was known to do, but she wasn’t anywhere. Was it because of what she knew he had to say next? Was she afraid of what he would say next? When god got a hold of him, he got away from himself. But he knew he had to do it, because that’s what a god would want him to do.
“Before I leave you today—”
Cathedra let out a pathetic cry, as if they’d thought this would last forever.
“—I want you to know that we believe each and every one of you deserve an explanation for what happened on the Divide before the battle with the Arachne. I spoke to the brave soldiers that day in the same way that I am speaking you all of you today. Except on that day… god spoke, too. A divine intervention of pure inspiration.”
As expected, the audience gasped. Their breath collected in the air and created a wall of fog above them.
“I am god’s voice, but as is often the case, Mother Abbess is god’s hand. And on that day, seeing the threat we were against, god worked through the Mother Abbess and granted me a miraculous boon that empowered our men and women to destroy the Arachne threat.
“The Mother Abbess is not the White Worm of the Earth. That is a lie perpetuated by King Edgar, who, to remind you, took the throne only after forging an unholy pact that required him to murder his entire family. The Mother Abbess is the living embodiment of a miracle, so fear not when it comes to the Holy Order’s prowess. We have survived the Trauma. We will survive the one to come.”
Felix bowed his head and put his hands together. His fingertips were turning blue. He itched where the vestments didn’t fully cover him. When you acted like a god for so long, it was easy to forget you weren’t one.
“Pray with me.”
The thousands gathered mirrored him, bowing their heads and putting their hands together. They closed their eyes. He did not.
By the time Felix was back in Cenotaph, warmed up and back into his regular robes, the cathedral was beginning to fill with guests, visitors, and staff. For weeks, the place had been boarded up, off-limits to almost everyone. Yet, in a few hours’ time, it was as if it had always been this way—bustling, noisy, and alive.
Stranger still were the new tenants who occupied Felix and Justine’s quarters deep in the cathedral, on the third floor.
Clementine, Will, Warren, James, and Gemma.
“That was wonderful,” Clementine told him as he came out of his room.
Each of them were there waiting for him. Each of them had a Holy Child statue at their back, ready to run them through with their star-shaped heads.
“Yeah, you killed it,” Warren said.
James and Will nodded together.
Gemma stayed quiet.
“The Mother Abbess moved us up here,” James said. “Thank you, your Holiness, for speaking to her.”
Felix hadn’t, but he took credit all the same.
“Well, you did wonderful,” Clementine said. Her freckles bunched together when she smiled. “You continue to amaze us. We’ll do right by you and yours.”
Warren moved to reach out and squeeze Felix’s shoulders, but the Holy Child behind him squealed, and he stopped. “Okay then… your Holiness, we’re not going to hold you up. Just wanted to let you know we’re here.”
“Where are you going?” Felix asked.
“The Mother Abbess said we should get to know Cenotaph,” Will said, quietly. “A tour.”
Felix nodded.
“Great job,” Clementine said, longing in her voice. And then: “Okay, gang, let’s leave his Holiness to his business.”
Clementine, Will, James, and Warren said their goodbyes, and they were gone—two of Felix’s guard trailing behind them.
Gemma, on the other hand, didn’t move at all.
“Nice speech,” she said. “Thanks for not selling us out.”
Felix stepped away from her, towards where the hall fell away to the balcony that overlooked Cenotaph’s main hall. They were alone up here.
“I heard you like sneaking. Me too. While you had all those local yokels mesmerized, I did some sneaking. Want to know what I found?”
Felix glanced at his guards. They were the Mother Abbess’ spies. Whatever they saw and heard, she saw and heard. He’d come to terms with that long ago. But if Gemma was about to say something that would put her and the others in danger—
“A box,” Gemma said. “A bunch of soldiers carried it into the basement.”
“What kind of box?”
“Wood, and then they cracked it open. There was another box inside. Guess what that one was made out of?”
Felix swallowed hard.
“Bodies,” she said, emphasizing. “Just what the hell do you keep in a box made out of bodies?”
CHAPTER XII
Audra marched into Nacthla at dusk with a sword in one hand and an empty flask in the other and shouted at the top of her lungs, “I am Audra of Eldrus. I am King Edgar’s sister!”
Deimos came up behind her and shoulder-checked her into the side of a stable. People passing by eyed her like the drunk she was, while others
tried to shoo Deimos away, as if he were forcing himself on her.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, waving his hand. “She’s had too much to drink. The winter has been hard for us all.”
Audra laughed, righted herself, and shoved him. “Shut up, Night Terror.”
This got them even more attention.
Deimos rolled up his coat and shirt sleeve and bared his Corruption to the crowd.
They looked upon it with suspecting eyes. One by one, the crowd thinned and interest was lost.
Audra took off opposite him, running her hand over the mouths of the snorting ponies in the stables. She was drunk, that was true, but she had, more or less, all her faculties. She was good at being drunk. No one ever gave her credit for that, let alone anything. You could get good at anything if you did it long enough. How many people could say they’d grown both a Crossbreed and Bloodless? That’s right. Not fucking many at all.
“Stop this,” Deimos called after her.
She stopped, spun around. “Stop what?”
The snow slowed; the flakes got fatter. The wind blew in such a way that it held them, rather than let them fall to the ground. It was like time had stopped. What the hell was this? Her moment of clarity?
Audra screamed. She grabbed her skull. She spun into the nearest stable and fell into a pile of piss-drenched hay. The pony inside sneered, and spooked, backed away from her, as far as possible.
The Vermillion God was speaking to her again, forcing Its way into her mind; each word slicing through her synapses, obliterating pathways. She didn’t hear the words. She felt them. They were like grains of sand with the density of dying stars.
Stop it! she screamed into her brain. Stop it! I can’t hear you! I don’t want to hear you!
Shadows filled her irises. In the darkness, she saw the yawning Deep.
A hand closed on her wrist. Audra snapped out of it and threw a fist. It smashed into Deimos’ jaw. He gasped, crashed into the same pile of piss-drenched hay.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wincing, as the Vermillion God’s tongue lifted from the folds of her mind. “It did It again.”
Deimos rubbed his reddening jaw.
“It’s getting worse. It’s not going to get better. It’s not going to leave me alone, Deimos.”
He said, “I’m sorry,” and sighed.
“He won’t kill me.”
“He killed your whole family.”
“But not me,” she said, shivering. She rubbed her eyes and the snot off her nose. “He could’ve, but he didn’t.”
“You’re a shadow-weaver,” Deimos whispered. He scooted closer, took her hands. “There are other ways to use your gift.”
“No, there aren’t. I can only do what I can do because of what I have to do.” She pressed her cheek to his knuckle. “If I don’t do this, I think I’ll die. I’ve been through so much. It has to be for something. Every road I’ve taken leads me back to Edgar. I have to show them.”
Deimos stared at her for several minutes. Finally, he reached for the flask and drained what little was left of it into his mouth. “I’m going with you,” he said.
Audra looked up, veins throbbing in her head, as if they were somehow digesting the Vermillion God’s filth.
“But we have to be patient.”
“I can’t wait forever—”
“Just a little while longer.” He leaned in and whispered, “The Warden of the Nameless Forest is scheduled to arrive soon in Nachtla.”
Audra’s mouth dropped. “Lotus? His… whatever the fuck she is to him?”
“Yes. If you can convince her of who you are, I know she will take you straight to him. But in the meantime, Audra…”
“Yes?”
“What can you grow?”
CHAPTER XIII
Tracking the Skeleton was like tracking a serial killer: the deviant was in the details. Two days out of Communion, and the land became a crime scene. The villages they passed were the victims. The areas surrounding, muted witnesses. Traders on the roadway sold rumors of the Skeleton at a discount, as if desperate to be rid of any information on him; while travelers walked, bone-shocked, in a hellish haze of unreality. Everything they’d seen or heard, be it from the fresh graves, the tufts of black hair growing out of houses and brutalized canopies of forests, or the gibbering madness that filled the magma-splattered countryside, told them the course Elizabeth had plotted to her revenge was leading them the right way.
It was late-February by the time they reached the village of Formue, but the weather surrounding it was the worst any summer could have to offer. Several feet of untouched snow circled Formue a mile out from its center, but beyond that, as if the village were captured within an invisible dome, the grass was dead, nearly charred; and the heat inside this dome shimmered mouth-watering mirages in the air, regardless of whether it was day or night. The people who lived there, which couldn’t have been more than sixty, slid like slugs through the four streets that bound the cross-shaped village. Stripped to their underwear and drenched in sweat and oil, they milled about in exhausted agitation—the very of act of living seemingly the thing that was killing them.
Vrana, Aeson, and Elizabeth set up camp on the line of the temperature anomaly. When they got too hot or cold, they would switch sides by doing something as simple as rolling over. The only cover they had were two trees—one covered in icicles, the other permanently puffing out clouds of smoke.
“The heat feels good, yeah?” Elizabeth said. She was sitting, reclining on her hands; her head in winter; her feet in summer.
Vrana smiled but kept working at the mortar and pestle she held. Inside, a thick combination of Reprieve, Snare, and Starry Eye had been rendered into a paste. She reached into winter, grabbed a handful of snow, and brought it back to summer. It melted in seconds, and she let the water run over her concoction. These, among other things and the Skeleton’s key from her Black Hour visit a year ago, had been in the bag her mother had thrown to her moments before she died. The supplies were for Vrana, but she used them only for Aeson.
Aeson sat in summer, sweating through his clothes and bits of leather armor. After the carnage at Communion, he didn’t speak much. Some of that was on him, but most of it had to do with Vrana and the potions she was making. In their journey between Communion and Formue, she had gathered every ingredient she could get her hands on that would dampen anxiety and reduce bad thoughts. The concoctions worked, but at the cost of his words, energy, and giving a fuck at all.
“Here,” Vrana said, bringing the mortar to his lips.
He tipped his head back and took it in. He even licked it when he was finished, so as not to waste a single drop.
Vrana took the mortar away. He wasn’t supposed to like this as much as he did.
“The Skeleton’s leaving Black Hours up everywhere,” Elizabeth said. “Formue’s probably going to think you’re part of the Black Hour, Vrana.”
Vrana stowed the mortar and pestle. Moving in the temporary summer was draining. Feathers fell from her, like leaves from a tree.
Aeson snorted out a laugh.
“I’ll go find someone to talk to,” Vrana said. “The road splits from here, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Elizabeth stood, brushed the snow off her butt. “North of here is Hvlav; East… Skygge; South… that’s Brann. Bunch of other, smaller places in between, but those are the big ones, yeah?”
Vrana said, “Did you come down this way when you and the others left the Nameless Forest?”
“No one knows a map better than an orphan.” She chewed on the inside of her lip. “But, yeah, we should talk to someone. It’s a big area, yeah? And I don’t know why he’d stay for long.”
Vrana knew why he’d stay. If there was any truth to her Black Hour meeting with the Skeleton, and she believed there was, then the Skeleton was held up in some keep, murdering villagers, searching for a way to reverse his immortality. She remembered there had been sounds of a mob, too, before the temporal aberration
had spat her out. They had to find him before then, before he killed more, or left for good.
Again, Aeson snorted. He covered his mouth. Eyes watering with glee, his body shook as he restrained his laughter.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Vrana asked. “You’re done. I’m not making you anymore potions. The side effects aren’t…”
Elizabeth snapped her fingers and pointed at Formue. “Vrana, people are coming.”
Out of Formue, five came. In their dirty underwear, they slid slowly towards them across the parched earth. Two men, two women, and an androgynous child—they each carried in their limp grips odd objects. At first, Vrana had equated them to slugs because of the sheen of sweat that covered them like slime and the way she’d seen them move. But they were slugs; at least, from the chest down. Their skin, tanned and baked, was tough and textured; a hunk of flesh, their mantle, bulged from their backs; and their legs were fused, separating only at the ankles, causing them to simultaneously slither and take small steps.
These five of Formue looked like something the Maiden of Pain might make, but it couldn’t have been her: she was nothing more than a pile of shit Vrana had squeezed out and buried in an unmarked grave back in Kistvaen’s range. This was the Skeleton’s work, and here they were, looking to employee him.
“Oh, great Winged Beast!” the androgynous child cried, their voice no hint as to their sex. “Thank you for coming!”
Aeson stepped up beside Vrana and said, snickering, “I… I get it.”
The five slid-walked and stopped several yards away from Vrana, Aeson, and Elizabeth. Refusing to make eye contact, they didn’t drop to their knees, but lay their bodies entirely on the hot, hissing ground. They outstretched their stretched-out arms and offered the objects they held to them.
The two men bore two bowls filled with hundreds of writhing earthworms.
The two women presented two cups, one filled with blood, the other glowing water.
The androgynous child gave a single severed head sealed within a chitinous casing.