Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

  “Someone might come by,” Heden said. “Thin, short curly blonde hair. Well-dressed.”

  “You want us to kill him?” Bann asked.

  “No,” Heden explained patiently.

  “Just hurt him a little, then?”

  “No,” Heden repeated slower. “He’s a friend.”

  Teagan nodded.

  “Well that’s as may be,” Bann said, looking between Heden and Teagan, “but not all your friends get along, if you get me drift.”

  Heden nodded. “Tell him,” Heden began. “If he shows up, tell him that you’ve known a lot of snakes, and you appreciate the ferret.”

  Bann nodded. “And that’ll do the trick?” he said.

  Heden nodded. He pointed to the door. “No one goes in, got it?”

  They nodded. Heden started to walk away and then thought better of something and turned back. “Or leaves,” he said.

  “Now that goes without saying,” Bann said smiling. “Off you go now, save the world.”

  Heden turned and walked away.

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  Chapter Fifty Two

  Heden burst into the abbot’s quarters and threw his pack on the divan where he normally sat.

  “How do the Hart bury their dead?”

  The abbot looked at him and blinked. He didn’t ask ‘what?’ or ask Heden what he was talking about. He put the quill down, covered his inkpot, and sat back in his chair. He crossed his hands over his stomach and thought.

  “Heden you know I can’t tell you that,” the abbot said.

  Heden pointed at him accusingly. “But you’ve been there for the ritual.”

  The abbot nodded. “And that’s one reason. It’s sacred.”

  Heden stared at him.

  “You know you’re one of the people who talked me into becoming an Arrogate.”

  “This has nothing to do with that.”

  “If I were still a member of the church, you could tell me.”

  “Heden, the time you spend here with me is just as sacred, just as much a ritual, as anything I do with the White Hart.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Heden frowned, frustrated.

  “You’re a smart boy, you’ll figure it out.”

  “Are you saying you talk to knights of the Hart?”

  The abbot just looked at him.

  “Heden, do you think that when I talk to the king,” which they both knew he did, “that I mention the things you and I talk about?”

  “There are something like a thousand people at the keep,” Heden glowered.

  The abbot pursed his lips.

  “Maybe you should ask Gwiddon.”

  “What?”

  “Gwiddon knows a lot.”

  “Not about the Hart,” Heden said.

  “Well, if he did,” the abbot said pointedly, “but you never asked him, then it would be just as if he didn’t.”

  Heden wasn’t paying attention. He was becoming furious.

  “Do you want me to go talk to Radallach? Because I will. And I will beat it out of him.”

  The abbot didn’t react. Wasn’t sad, nor afraid. Just thinking.

  “No,” he concluded finally, looking down and patting his large belly absently. “I don’t want that.”

  The abbot ran his hand across his forehead, smoothing the stress out of it. Then scratched at the back of his neck.

  “They wrap the body in samite,” he began.

  “I know that part,” Heden said.

  “And they take it into Bleddan Wode.” The wode was a small forest roughly a day’s ride from Celkirk. It was the local haunted wood and, like all the wodes, the truth was worse than any stories that had grown up around it.

  “Hah,” Heden said. “Of course they do. There’s something in the forest, isn’t there?”

  The abbot nodded. “They give the body to the genius loci of the wode,” he said.

  Heden nodded. “It’s a naiad, isn’t it?” he was leaping ahead, his face an open map of his thoughts leaping forward.

  The abbot shook his head. “No, it’s a draiad.”

  “Same thing,” Heden said, dismissively. He stood triumphantly in the middle of the abbot’s small quarters, looking around at nothing. “Same thing,” he repeated.

  The abbot just watched him, waiting.

  “Brys tried to tell me,” Heden said. “I was close, and he knew it.”

  “What did he try to tell you Heden?” The abbot asked. Heden started pacing around the room.

  “I didn’t see it,” Heden said. “He practically pissed himself in front of me and I didn’t see it.” He looked at the abbot. “I wanted to give Taethan the benefit of the doubt. They all seemed to hate him, but not the way you would a murderer. So I asked Brys if Taethan killed Kavalen out of duty. Maybe he thought he was doing the right thing. If he…” Heden stopped, unable to finish the sentence.

  “If he arrogated to himself the responsibility of doing what the other knights could not,” the abbot finished. “That would explain why they hated him. Especially if they agreed but couldn’t bring themselves to do it.”

  Heden just stood there.

  “Yeah,” he said dully, realizing how his own experience had misled him. How much he had projected onto Taethan. “Brys was shocked. I thought it was because I was onto something. But that wasn’t why Brys reacted that way.”

  “Why then?” The abbot said.

  Heden grabbed his pack.

  “I have to see the body!” he said.

  “Which you now know where is,” the abbot said.

  “He tried to tell me, he showed me but I didn’t see it. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Brys?”

  “No, Taethan. He said the dead knights were accepted back into the heart of the forest.”

  The abbot nodded. “Which you took to be symbolic.”

  “But that was the whole point of him taking me to the lake. He called it the heart of the forest. He was trying to show me where Kavalen’s body was, and I didn’t see it.”

  Heden stopped moving and stared into space as all the pieces fell into place.

  “That’s where Nudd was going. He wasn’t coming to save us; he was taking Idris’ body to the lake. To bury it.”

  Heden threw open his pack and fished out the remains of the carpet.

  “What are you going to do?” the abbot asked, calmly.

  “I’m going back.”

  “Is there much time?”

  “There’s no time,” Heden said, and stopped. He stuffed the carpet back in the pack. “I won’t be able to take the carpet, I’ll have to….”

  Silence for a moment.

  “I’m sure Elzpeth would be glad to see you,” the abbot said quietly.

  “Balls,” Heden said. “It’ll have to be Negra.”

  “She will not be glad to see you,” the abbot said smoothly.

  “You can stop helping now,” Heden said, and walked out the door.

  Chapter Fifty Three

  Negra’s shop was under her home and both were on Apell street, not far from the cathedral. The symbol on the sign hanging over the door was a solid black circle with lines radiating out from it. The Black Sun. Neatly incorporating one of the symbols for magic with the Tevas translation of her chosen name in the First Language.

  He stood in front of the door and stared at it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been here, the last time he talked to her. But it had been to ask a favor then, too.

  He stepped up and knocked on the door.

  It opened immediately.

  “Heden,” Negra said smoothly, her voice dripping with distaste.

  “Did you know I was standing out here?” he asked, frowning.

  She stared at him and did not answer. She was tall, one of the tallest women Heden had ever met, with pale skin, long black hair, and a simple black dress. Heden had seen her in other dresses, less simple, and even though she was too slim for his tastes, she never failed to make an
impression. Sometimes her elegance reminded Heden of a black swan. Sometimes a snake.

  “You’ve come to ask a favor,” she said.

  “How’s Rane?” Heden asked.

  She sighed theatrically, maintaining her aura of distaste and disinterest.

  “I wouldn’t know; I haven’t talked to him in two years.”

  “Oh,” Heden said. “I’m sorry,” he added lamely. “I liked him.”

  “So did I,” Negra said, leaning on the doorframe and crossing her arms.

  “I need something,” Heden said.

  “Yes,” Negra nodded. “You do.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I need a scroll.”

  “What kind of scroll?” she asked.

  “Translocation.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s complex,” Heden said, betraying a little impatience.

  “Why don’t you ask Reginam,” Negra said, nodding behind Heden at the tower of the Quill.

  “I can’t ask her.”

  “But you can ask me?”

  “I shouldn’t ask you either,” Heden admitted. “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop saying that,” she muttered, frowning.

  Her look softened. “Do you want…” she began. “Do you want to come in?” She asked.

  Heden did want to come in. He wanted to make everything right again but he knew now that wasn’t possible. Might never be possible. And he’d hate himself afterward.

  “You know I can’t do that,” he said.

  “No, I guess not,” she said, looking at him with a little pity but no forgiveness.

  She reached behind her to a shelf he couldn’t see and without otherwise moving produced a scroll.

  “You knew I was coming,” he said, looking at the scroll in her hand.

  “Do you know why she hates you, Heden?” Negra asked, casually holding out the scroll, waiting for Heden to take it.

  Heden snatched it from her hands. “Thank you Negra,” he said, unable to meet her eyes.

  “She hates you…”

  “Goodbye Negra,” Heden said, turning and walking away.

  “…because even after everything, she’s always believed you could make it all right.” Now she had to shout to be heard. People watched them, seeing a fight. “All you had to do was want it bad enough!” she shouted.

  Heden trudged away, leaving her alone.

  “And that makes it all your fault,” she said, to no one.

  She watched him until he turned onto the street that would take him home.

  “Pigfucker,” she said, with no malice, and turned and closed the door.

  Chapter Fifty Four

  It was raining at the lake. Just as beautiful under heavy clouds as bright sun. Its surface a mass of disturbances from raindrops like the craterous impact of a million tiny catapults. Two dozen trees, each as tall as the tallest spire of the cathedral lay on the ground, most stretching out into the lake. They’d lie here for a hundred years before finally disintegrating.

  Heden made no concession to the rain. He just got wet. He looked around as though expecting to see someone else here. He didn’t know who that might be. Taethan, probably. Almost everyone else was dead.

  He opened his hand and the scroll, the writing burned off it, fell to the ground. He didn’t move. He didn’t want to learn what he thought he was going to learn, and he enjoyed just looking at the forest for its own sake. The massive, implacable trees, the lake, the sky. It reminded Heden of how fragile and small the human experience was. Something he felt he needed to be reminded of.

  But soon he was incapable of justifying delay, and reached into his pack. There were songs, he was aware, that could summon the lake spirit, but he knew none of them. He was not a minstrel.

  Rather, he simply attempted power. Starkiller was made by the Elementals to serve in their last war against the Celestials. The spirit of the lake, if spirit there was, was a creation of the Celestials. Heden didn’t know what effect Starkiller would have, but he knew it would do something.

  Drawing the thin grey blade from his pack, lacking any sheath to keep it in, Heden immediately knew he was right. The blade hummed an eerie whistling hum that matched its unlight glow. It sensed the presence of a Celestial, or something made by them.

  He stood there, in the rain, Starkiller hanging loosely at his side, staring at the lake. Nothing happened. The surface of the water continued to sizzle with raindrops.

  He stepped forward, and dipped the tip of the longsword into the water. The reaction wasn’t violent or startling, but was obvious. The water physically pulled back from the sword. Unable to move entirely out of the way, it nonetheless depressed several inches as though something heavy were resting on it. The tip of the sword appeared to disappear in the lake. Heden bent down to look. Awkwardly holding the sword in one hand, he knelt and saw that the sword was completely invisible past the surface of the water, even though the water was clear and he could see rocks and leaves a few inches under it. Either the lake was denying the sword, or the sword was ignoring the lake.

  His knees and legs were soaking at the edge of the water, and so he stood up. In doing so, he saw the naiad.

  She was standing a few feet away from him on the surface of the lake, like it was solid ground. Like a marble statue of a young girl. Shaped like a human, but not human. Appeared female, but Heden knew she was immortal and sexless. She was short, shorter than a man but taller than a dwarf. And she was beautiful. All of the creations of the Celestials were beautiful. Art was the only thing that mattered to them.

  She was naked and lithe and had pale blue skin and long, light-blue hair. It didn’t look unnatural or sickly, it looked like the health and power of the lake made solid.

  Her gaze wandered over Heden curiously with eyes that were solid blue. It made it difficult to look directly at her.

  She opened her mouth and spoke to Heden. The sound that came forth was like wind chimes. Or the perfect pitch of a wet finger rubbed along the rim of a wine glass. It was a language no normal man could comprehend. Heden was no normal man.

  Even translating in his head, it was still nonsense. The Celestials spoke in a kind of open poetry. Lacking meter or rhyme, only a fluid expression of thought.

  “If we see only what we wish to see,” she was saying, “how can we say we are not blind?”

  She was chastising him. The presence of Starkiller obviously upset her and she was asking Heden why he insisted on approaching her on his terms rather than hers. Why he didn’t think about the effect on her?

  “I’m sorry,” Heden said in common Tevas. He knew she could understand his language and probably speak it as well, but chose not to. Sometimes the nature spirits of the Celestials forgot humans existed. How to behave around them. “I didn’t know how to summon you otherwise.”

  “The child sees everything anew and with wonder. Smiling at creation and destruction alike.”

  You should have known better. Heden nodded. He put the sword away.

  “I think,” he started. He didn’t know how to begin. He had met these genius loci before, and so wasn’t daunted, but was afraid he might say the wrong thing, and not get his answer. “I think Sir Taethan wanted me to come here,” he said. He hoped the name meant something to the naiad.

  She nodded.

  “You sway to the pulse of a river of blood that flows through your body,” she said with a small smile. “You believe in things that you cannot see.”

  I think so too.

  “Is this where the order buries its dead?”

  She didn’t say anything for a little while. Just the constant sound of rain on water before him and leaves behind him.

  “See the leaves fall, last breath,” she said.

  Yes.

  “Do you know,” Heden asked, and then paused as he realized midway through that she could not know. “How he died?”

  “What is a star, if not the guiding light? The permanent eye that sees the impermanent. You look up and find guidance
on your journey, but the stars neither journey nor guide. The stars do not see today and yesterday, only forever.”

  Heden nodded. She didn’t know. She was an immortal water creature who couldn’t understand the difference between life and death.

  “Then I need to see his body,” he said.

  “You wish to be a child again. But if you were to truly be born anew, you would have to gouge out your eyes, cut out your tongue, and grieve.”

  “I know,” Heden said. She was warning him that a thing once seen could not be unseen. “But I have to see it. I’m trying to save them!” The words were almost pulled from him.

  “The fly would spin a web to catch the spider, if he could.”

  There was something about talking to the Celestials, their poetic expression of ideas, which made it difficult to argue with them. Heden found himself disappearing down into a warren of meaning. He was able to spin the Naiad’s words into anything, project whatever fears and doubts he had onto them. Other Celestials didn’t have this problem, it was a thing unique to humans.

  “I think,” he said. “I think you mean that I would try and stop you, if I knew what you know and our roles were reversed.”

  She nodded. He felt a little thrill of having worked something out.

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “I still have to know.”

  “Who stands above the mountains,” she asked in her chiming, shining voice. “And at your word they fled, they hastened away, and sent spring into the valley.”

  Heden knew this reference. It was part of a Celestial legend, an Elven hero who fought the great mountain that held back the seasons. He was only able to succeed when he had given up everything he had.

  Heden looked at her, trying to sense her meaning. Or trying to avoid it.

  “Need.” she said. “And want nothing.”

  A tiny pit opened in Heden’s stomach. She wanted something in return for this information.

  “I’m trying to save the Green Order,” he reiterated. “That has to mean something to you. You have a pact with them, that’s why you accept their dead.”

  She shook her head. “Need, and want nothing,” she repeated.

  “What is it to you?” he asked. “What is your stake in this?” he challenged.