Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

  Heden was in the mood for a fight, but Brys backed down. His hair was still green, but the fight had gone out of him.

  “I had hoped….”

  “Yeah? What?”

  Brys wouldn’t look at him.

  “You thought she’d kill Idris and then magically Halcyon would appear and crown her commander of you lot? By Cavall, I thought the White Hart was bad.”

  “If we ride now,” Taethan said to Brys, ignoring Heden, “we can gain Ollghum Keep an hour before the Yllindir. The siege may last days. We can still discharge our duty.”

  “It is no matter,” Brys repeated. “We cannot stop the siege. We cannot stop the urmen. We can’t stop anything.”

  “Do you think Halcyon will allow you to remain a knight,” Taethan said levelly, “if those people die?”

  “How could she not?” Brys demanded. “What have we done but obey…” He stopped and looked at Heden.

  Heden was staring at the priory. Taethan saw it too.

  Brys turned around.

  “What is happening?” he asked, his eyes darting all over the priory.

  Smoke was billowing out the archway. A fire was roaring inside, they could see its light flickering through the stained glass windows.

  The priory was on fire.

  “By Cavall,” Heden said. At the name of his god, thunder rippled across the sky and it started to rain. It would not be enough. Nowhere near enough.

  “Where is Isobel?” Brys asked, running forward. “Where did she go!?” he was frantic.

  “Taethan!” Heden cried, pointing to Brys. Heden started to run after the knight. “Taethan stop him!! Stop him!!”

  Taethan just watched in horror, paralyzed.

  Brys ran into the burning church. Heden went after him.

  Inside, the wooden prayer benches had been pulled around haphazardly, and several were stacked around the altar.

  On the altar stood Isobel, her armor stripped from her. Her clothes stripped from her. She stood there naked, and opened her arms to Brys.

  He ran past the burning benches, and leapt up onto the altar, embracing Isobel in his arms.

  The benches around the altar burst into flame.

  The fire roared, blasting heat out through the archway where Heden stood. He could see no path through the fire. It mirrored Isobel’s despair, raging just as Brys enfolded her in his arms. He saw only their silhouettes through the fire.

  They kissed passionately, like lovers, and the fire consumed them both.

  Heden couldn’t watch. He turned away just as Isobel screamed. Howled with incalculable pain and fear and more. Heden put his hands over his ears trying to block it out. He heard realization and regret in her mad screaming.

  She was trying to get away. She was gibbering, desperate to get away from what she’d started. She’d changed her mind, but Brys clung to her. She realized what she’d done, and as the fire burned the flesh from her bones, she regretted it, and found there was no way back.

  There was no sound from Sir Brys.

  Heden’s vision had come true. The Wode had twisted time and showed him the place burned when he first arrived. Covered in soot, the soil black, and now Heden was seeing it happen.

  He opened his eyes. Taethan stood before him, looking into the blazing church, his face a rictus of hellfire. Orange light and shadow played across his fine features.

  Heden grabbed him by the straps across his chest. The knight recoiled.

  “How many!?” Heden shouted. “Is this enough?!” He shook the knight. Taethan did not resist, but did not answer him.

  “Tell me what happened!!” Heden howled out his pain on the implacable knight as the air filled with the charred flesh of Isobel and Brys. He didn’t even know why he was asking any more. Nothing made sense to him.

  Taethan would not answer. Could not. Heden gave up. Pushed him away. He looked at the burning priory in dull horror. Then turned to Taethan, holding his clenched fist before him, the tendons on his arms and neck standing out.

  “I swear by Cavall and Llewllyn, if I had the power I would curse you, I would lay such a curse upon you it would strike you blind and dumb. Your skin would boil off your bones, your eyes would cook, you’d shit your own entrails out and you would know that judgment had been passed upon you!” he hissed, furious.

  “Heden, please….”

  Heden pushed himself away and looked at Taethan as though for the first time. What had he come here for? What had he achieved? He raised his hands as though to protect himself from attack. He remembered the giant, the grimace of Perren consumed by the wode. Idris, Isobel, Brys.

  He looked at Taethan, unable to understand his unwavering denial of everything that had happened, and he hated the knight.

  “Cyrvis take your bones,” Heden abjured with a wave as he turned. It was not a thing a man of Cavall could say.

  “Heden!” Taethan called.

  As Heden strode away, he turned and, walking backward, pointed at the knight.

  “You knew!” he called out, and waved to the blazing priory. “You knew and did nothing!” Eyes red with tears and anger, he pointed at Taethan. “This be upon your head, knight!” He spat the word out. He was shaking with rage. He could not master it. He could only leave it behind. Cut it off and jettison it to survive.

  He turned his back on the knight and the priory, its fire casting a long shadow. He opened his pack and yanked out the square of carpet that was left.

  He stared into the bottomless pack, rain matting his hair to his face. Remembering something Taethan had said. He had the power, though he tried to avoid admitting it. He could save the people at Ollgham Keep.

  Heden lay the carpet on the wet ground, stepped on it, and draw Starkiller from his pack.

  Armed with the ancient dwarven elf-slayer, Heden willed the carpet to rise, up, out, over the forest, speed through the rain toward the doomed keep.

  Chapter Forty Six

  The keep had been almost completely razed to the ground. Heden wondered if the Yllindir had been here. If it was under the control of the urq. That seemed improbable, but no more improbable that the near complete destruction of the keep.

  The walls had been pulled down. The town surrounding the keep was still on fire, but the flames were dying, whether from time or the rain or both, Heden didn’t know.

  The motte and bailey that formed the core of the town and gave the keep its name was now a burned out husk. It was the main source of the black smoke. Bodies, Heden knew, provided the fuel.

  Heden landed, got up, and walked off the carpet, leaving it behind. No one else could use it in any case, and he was certain there was no one left alive here.

  There were many heads spit upon pikes. He could see dozens in every direction. Probably hundreds overall. Each urq, killing a human, would use a specially prepared ceremonial pike for the purpose. Heden didn’t look at their dead faces. Didn’t want to see someone he’d met here.

  There were no bodies, though. Just heads. The urmen knew that the fat from the bodies was the best fuel for firing the keep.

  He walked down the town’s main road to the motte and bailey, the wet soil black with soot. But he could not attain the ruined keep itself, it was still too hot. The stones in a heap were glowing faintly, had once been red hot. Heden guessed this had all happened the day before. Possibly around the same time Lady Isobel had immolated herself. The same time Sir Brys had run in to die with her.

  Heden now wondered if the Lady had known the timing of the urq army’s march, and knew her sister and the town and people she had been born to rule were dying, and had chosen to die with her. He felt a heavy weight pressing down on his chest, he was suddenly certain this was what fueled her grief. How could it be otherwise?

  She was dead, though. Heden wondered if the Baron died in flames just as her sister did. Heden couldn’t bear to think about it. There was nothing now here to do. The urq army was nowhere to be seen. Their tracks went nowhere but the keep, which meant they’d marched
back into the forest once their raiding was done.

  Was there any connection between the keep and the knights? Heden wondered. There had probably been a time where he could have saved the keep, though he hadn’t wanted to face that. Was there a time when he could have saved the knights?

  How much of this was he responsible for? He didn’t know. Just the thought of it made him sick. There was someone who knew. Someone who could tell him. And he no longer had any reason to stay here. His failure was complete.

  Chapter Forty Seven

  The Cathedral of Saint Llewellyn the Valiant was the largest stone building in Vasloria. Its massive spires towered over the other buildings in Celkirk, a statement about the power and influence of the Church of Cavall the Righteous and his most popular saint. The only other building like it was the Cathedral of St. Bróccan the Stout, the primary saint of Adun, now a ruin in Ǽndrim’s former high city of Exeter.

  The sun was not yet up and the sky was grey. Heden walked down cobbled roads to the church, reminded of a similar walk at this same time of day, but to the jail to deal with Vanora. Before he knew she was Vanora. Only a few days ago. A lifetime ago.

  Heden was relieved to discover the cathedral was empty save for a few acolytes observing the dawn rituals, keeping the place clean.

  The abbot waddled around replacing the ceremonial candles. In an hour the place would be packed with supplicants. Heden hated that. He hated the place in general, had hated it the moment he saw it long ago.

  Even at the height of his passion for the church, his worship of Cavall, he saw the cathedral of Saint Llewellyn as a massive piece of propaganda. It was a monument to power. The power of the church, its influence. It loomed over everything, deliberately. It was, Heden knew, a challenge to the king and while this upset him, most of all it bothered Heden that everyone in Celkirk should be reminded that Cavall was Corwell’s patron deity. The average person, Heden felt, should be allowed to get on with their lives. What did it say about the church he served that somewhere there were people in it who felt the need to remind the citizens who they owed their spiritual allegiance to? The king’s castle was large, but still a purely military building. There was nothing military about the cathedral. You could march a whole army right in and no one could stop them.

  In most ways, the church was the priory writ large, except you could fit three priories in the huge empty space inside the cathedral. It could fit over two thousand people in the main room and the walk down the long nave to the altar took quite a while. Especially when yours were the only boots that rang out on the cold stone floor.

  Everyone in the church heard him, and all turned to look. Many of the acolytes knew him and so did not give him a second glance. The rest looked to the abbot, who used a long brass candle lighter to light the candles. The light outside was grey and so did not project the brilliant, multi-colored light of the massive stained glass windows, each as high as the priory’s spire, into the room as they usually did. It gave the place a larger, more cavernous feel.

  The abbot turned, saw Heden, watched him as he methodically tramped down the main aisle past dozens of prayer benches, then went back to lighting the candles. The acolytes watched Heden, but no longer monitored him.

  Every time Heden saw him, he was reminded that the abbot was now an old man. He wasn’t old in Heden’s memory, just…older. Older than Heden. Now, of course, that meant the man was in his sixties. twenty years used to seem like an eternity, but now Heden felt they were almost the same age. Heden felt like he was catching up.

  The abbot had a short crop of grey and white hair on top of his head like a small raincloud had nested on his pate. His pale square face was now well-jowled though it had not always been. He had thin blue eyes and a wide smile from thin red lips. Taller than Heden, he had once been fit, but service to the church in the same building for fifty years and many heavy meals had thickened the man. He also had a stiffness in his legs that gave him a comical waddle, which he deliberately exaggerated for the sake of his students, who needed to learn early that wisdom could play the buffoon.

  When Heden stopped a few feet away, the abbot was stretching and making elaborate noises to let everyone know how much his body complained about this duty.

  “I thought of you, yesterday,” the abbot said. His voice that of a comic character in a play. Unbidden came the thought of a Riojan troubadour and how much he and the abbot would like each other. “A student was asking about Adan the Rector. My first thought was of digging up…enh…your old papers.”

  Heden said nothing.

  “’Human beings are not mathematical formulae, we cannot expect mathematical solutions.’ I thought you wrote that, how’s that for a compliment? I’d forgotten it was Adan. I tend to do that with you. You were so good at restating his work.”

  More stretching and grunting from the abbot. Silence from Heden.

  “Did you know,” the abbot continued, ignoring Heden, “that there was a fifteen year old whore staying at your inn yesterday? Before you ask, Gwiddon told me. Not sure why I was surprised. Seems the least surprising thing in the world to me now.”

  He put a hand on his back and lowered the candle lighter. He grunted theatrically and turned to smile at Heden, a twinkle in his eye.

  Then he saw Heden’s visage, and stopped smiling.

  “Ah, well. It’s that then. Come on!” the abbot declared. “Let’s get out of the nave. We don’t want to scare the acolytes.”

  The abbot led the way to his quarters in one of the dozens of rooms that fit into the niches and hidden away places in the Cathedral. It was a trail well-known to Heden.

  Inside his quarters—piled with books and scrolls, several busts, an astrolabe, a working model of Orden with special disks for the World Below, the Land of Faerie, and the Dawn and Dusk moons as well as a stuffed owl, all collecting dust—Heden slumped down onto a threadbare divan against the wall by the door. One he had spent hundreds of hours on, man and boy.

  The abbot waddled his way around his heavy rosewood desk, making a show of how difficult it was. Possibly to hide how difficult it actually was. He carefully sat down and then let out a sigh as though preparing for heavy thinking, which he was.

  He raised his thick, bushy white eyebrows once, signaling Heden.

  “I need,” Heden had a hard time beginning. Was afraid to start. It was taking all his willpower to keep himself together. He was forty-three years old. He didn’t want to cry in front of the abbot like some bawling babe. “I need help.”

  The abbot knew to keep silent. Let Heden find his own way.

  “I don’t understand…” Heden said, and looked around the room. Looked at anything except the abbot.

  “I don’t know…what the point of…” he found it hard to breathe. He reached up, under his collar, and fished for the talisman of Lynwen. The icon of a woman’s smiling eye. He wrestled it out from under his clothes and breastplate, and pulled it violently up over his head.

  Once released, he held the talisman, silver chain dangling, and stared at it.

  The abbot watched and said nothing. Let Heden fill the space up. Heden tossed the amulet down on the divan. He looked like someone had stabbed him.

  “Things went bad in the wode?” the abbot prompted.

  Heden was both surprised and concerned. “You know about it?”

  “Gwiddon told me.”

  “Oh,” Heden said without feeling.

  More silence.

  “Things went bad,” he said finally, his eyes looking out into nothing.

  More silence.

  “I should have stayed at the inn,” Heden said.

  “Tell me what happened in the wode,” the abbot said, trying to keep Heden on one subject.

  It took Heden a while to say anything. Time seemed to slow for the two men, no one was eager to talk.

  Then Heden started, and the whole thing came out. The abbot didn’t ask any questions, he concentrated on what Heden said. Heden skipped one thing, something he
didn’t feel the abbot needed to know.

  “At the river with the young squire,” the abbot asked, twirling a quill pen in his fingers. He didn’t look at Heden, he leaned back in his chair looking at a piece of art on the wall Heden had never paid much attention to.

  Heden grunted his understanding.

  “What that the only episode you had?”

  “I don’t…” Heden was struggling. “I need to talk about the knights,” he said. This wasn’t about him. He desperately needed the abbot’s insight. “I need to know why I was there. What was I supposed to do?” He was yearning, desperate.

  The abbot held up one finger. “The river,” he said, and then bit his lower lip in thought.

  Heden sighed.

  “No.”

  The abbot nodded as though he’d suspected that.

  “When I first went into the forest,” Heden said. “I got…disorientated. Confused.”

  “No clear direction, no path to follow,” the abbot filled in.

  Heden stretched out a little and seemed to relax.

  “I panicked,” Heden said. “I almost turned around.” Talking about it was difficult.

  The abbot hummed to himself. He thought in silence a moment then turned and faced Heden, leaned forward in his chair and put his arms on his desk.

  “The death of the giant bothered you,” the abbot said.

  “I didn’t come here for our normal…” Heden began, but the abbot cut him off.

  “You know the rules,” he said.

  Heden tried to calm down.

  “Talk to me about the thyrs,” the abbot said.

  In the state he was in, remembering the death of the hills thyrs was difficult. His eyes started to get red.

  “It was awful.”

  The abbot nodded, saying nothing. Allowing Heden to find his own way.

  “Aderyn had the problem under control. I don’t know why Nudd did what he did.”

  Heden was avoiding the issue, and they both knew it. The abbot didn’t say anything, confident Heden would get there.

  “I should have done something,” he said.