The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  The company were led silently into a dark chapel by cowled monks in black and brown habits. Even the captain was silent and respectful. The monks on the gates had included some with robes over full armour, and two stern-faced nuns had received Amicia and her sisters. The darkened chapel was the size of many a fair town church, with rafters sixty feet above a marble floor of interlocking hexagons. The chapel was so dark that Amicia could not see her hand in front of her face—literally, for she tried. She was led off to the right, where the nuns and novices of two orders stood in silent communion.

  No bells rang.

  It was the last moment of Lent.

  There was a rustling in the dark, at the back of the church, a single candle was lit by a monk, and a priest of the Order of Saint Thomas began to pray.

  The single candle illuminated the magnificent chapel of the Abbey of Bothey. Fifty years ago, one of the most gifted pargeters Harndon had ever nurtured had painted the whole chapel in one summer in the Etruscan manner; floor to ceiling paintings of the events of Christ’s life and Passion. The gold leaf alone was staggering, swimming in burnished metallic light even with only a single lit candle—and the quality of the painting was superb. Saint James was martyred, Jesus healed a man made blind and the now-sighted man rebuked the military governor for unbelief, his armour a bronze-gold against the brilliant polished lemon-gold of the background.

  And then monks and nuns began to sing, as did the knights of the Order, the brother sergeants and the sisters. There were twenty knights in their robes standing in the choir stalls, and a dozen sisters of the Order from the two houses in Southern Harndon. For Amicia and her sisters, it was a homecoming—a delight mixed with sadness. And the mass was one that Amicia would never forget, sung so well in a chapel so redolent with both splendour and meaning, surrounded by her own Order—and by the men and women of the company with whom she’d shared the road. As the first hour slipped away and the congregation sang the rolls of saints and martyrs, a taut expectancy filled the church, and as the bell outside tolled the middle of the night and the birth of a new day, Amicia lit her candle from a torch held by a knight of the Order, and the church sprang from darkness to bright light, and many of the monks and nuns produced hand bells from their robes and rang them joyously, so that the shrill riot of bells seemed to drive the darkness out and replace it with the throaty roar of gold and the coming dawn.

  By the time the host was consecrated, every one of the company were on their knees on the hard stone floor—even the captain.

  And after mass—as they celebrated their risen God—there was wine in the abbey’s paved courtyard, and an air of festivity that many would not have associated with monks and nuns living a life of cloistered virtue. Monks in brown habits lay under the stars on the smooth grass of the cloister’s central yard, discussing theology, and nuns sat in among the pillars of the double cloister, sipping strong red wine and laughing. Most of the knights of Saint Thomas were unarmed and unarmoured, the rest stood with their swords incongruous with their black monkish robes and academic caps, while the nuns of the Order—more worldly, and more given to the practice of medicine than to mystical contemplation—laughed louder and drank harder. For an hour or more, the threat of civil war was forgotten by most in the glory of God’s resurrection.

  Amicia found herself in a spirited conversation about the theological failings of the Patriarch of Rhum and the Archbishop of Lorica. The Minorites who held the abbey had more than a few hermetical practitioners among them—practical men and one woman who could make small fires, light candles, and the like. They were outraged—and deeply uneasy—at the sudden change in direction. They had thought themselves blessed, and were now told to believe themselves accursed. Many of the knights had some turn of talent—and having already had their Order declared anathema, they were in no mood to discuss the intellectual possibilities or the failings of the scholastics in Lucrece.

  As a nun of the Abbey at Lissen Carak, Amicia was both welcome and something of an oddity—the northern sisters hardly ever left their fortress. Amicia discovered in a few minutes of conversation that she was notorious as both a powerful mage and as a woman licensed to preach.

  Ser Tristan, an older Occitan knight of the Order, frowned and admitted that he might not have been in favour of any woman saying mass.

  “But you are one of ours,” he said. “And to hell with the archbishop.”

  Sister Amicia wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or offended. She had been aware—at a distance—that there were factions in the church, but now she felt naive as she confronted their reality. Even in the midst of celebration, there were some to whom she was a hero, and others who clearly kept their distance.

  She was reminded of her duty, and her place, over and over—a lesson in humility that she had the grace to accept.

  After two cups of good wine and an hour of conversation, praise, censure, and a hundred introductions, she found that she was exhausted—almost too tired to sleep. While the knights who knew her from the siege carried her from group to group like a prize, introducing her to the monks, priests and nuns of both orders, Katherine and Mary had followed some of the other Thomasine sisters to the women’s house, and Amicia was on the point of asking Ser Michael for directions—she could scarcely keep her eyes open—when a small girl came, curtsied, and said Prior Wishart had summoned her. She found him in the outer yard with two secular knights she didn’t know and she put her hands in her sleeves and stood demurely, waiting. She was afraid she might fall asleep on her feet.

  He glanced at her and smiled—a clear confirmation that she was to await him.

  She allowed her eyelids to fall, and in the next few beats of her heart received a pulse of apprehension as great as she had ever known.

  Something evil.

  Her eyes snapped open and she looked around, but the low murmur of voices and the sound of celebration—from the town below them as much as from the yard—spoke only of the feast of Easter.

  The prior came and took her hand. “I won’t keep you long,” he said.

  He looked as tired as she felt.

  “I need you to tell me anything you can,” he said.

  “About Ser Gabriel?” she asked, understanding all too well.

  “Sister Amicia, we’re teetering on the brink of civil war—or sliding past it.” Prior Wishart took her arm and led her to the abbey walls and then up stone steps to the crenellations. In the distance, on the edge of the dark horizon, there was a glow. And the smell of smoke was no longer hidden by incense.

  “Where is my duty now?” he asked.

  She didn’t think he was asking her.

  “Can I trust him?” the Prior asked her.

  She put her hands to her mouth. She almost giggled—a reaction of fatigue. “Yes,” she said.

  Prior Wishart peered at her from the darkness. “You have a—hmm—relationship with him,” he said.

  “I have not slept with him,” she said a little too quickly.

  “Sister, I have been a soldier and a priest for a long time.” He looked out into the night. “If I thought you had then I would not curse you, but neither would I look to you for guidance. Some men—more men every day…” He paused. “They wonder if the man who is called the Red Knight—” He shrugged. “If he is the King’s bastard son. I have heard it said many times now. And I have a report that his mother, the duchess, is suggesting the north should make its own king.”

  Amicia put her whole weight against one of the merlons. “Isn’t our Order supposed to be above this sort of thing?” she asked.

  “Never. No organization, no order, no group is above the manipulations of others. If we are strong, we can help shape the final outcomes, and if we are weak, we may become the tool of someone powerful—a tool that cannot make its own decisions.” The Prior nodded. “One of my options is to take all of us across the sea, or into Morea. Another is to go into the north. To Lissen Carak. And await events there.”

  Amicia was t
oo tired for all this. “All I know is that he and his people think they will rescue the Queen,” she said.

  “Ahh,” the Prior said. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “That is precisely what I wanted to hear.” He put a hand on her head. “Will he fight for the Queen?”

  Amicia felt she would betray a confidence by answering, but she shrugged inwardly. “I believe Ser Gabriel views himself as the Queen’s Champion. Indeed, I believe she asked him—but before the role had quite such consequences.”

  “Against the King?” the Prior asked quickly.

  Amicia pursed her lips and snapped, “I have never heard him say aught against the King, or the Queen. He bears no love for the Galles.” She frowned. “I have attended a number of the meetings of his officers. They are open in their derision of the King’s weakness. But then—” She looked hard at the prior. “But then, so am I.”

  “Bah,” Prior Wishart said. “It’s no treason at this point to think the King is mad or ensorcelled. Go sleep. Tomorrow will be very hard I suspect.”

  She curtsied. “I sense something… evil,” she said.

  Prior Wishart paused. “You are much stronger than I,” he said. “Yet I do feel some—malmaissance. Where is it, though? Is it Harndon, burning?”

  She took a deep breath, steadied herself, and searched with her aethereal eye.

  “It’s in the sky,” she said quietly.

  Wishart looked up. He looked for long enough that her eyelids began to sag.

  “Happy Easter, Sister,” he said. “I have to hope that it is a figment of our fatigue and our crisis. I cannot believe we are open here—on this night—to direct attack. Go and sleep.”

  She nodded, almost beyond speech, and went down from the wall. It was two or three hours after midnight—most of the abbey was asleep, and aside from the watch on the walls, most voices were stilled. The torches were out, and she took a wrong turn at the foot of the steps and found herself in the inner cloister, but aside from the monks lying on the grass, everyone was gone, and the only other men awake were some servants finishing the wine. She found the low tunnel, richly carved, that led from the inner cloister to the outer and, drawn by voices, she felt her way through the dark.

  Halfway, in almost total darkness, she had another shock of apprehension. She thought for a moment it might be her fatigue as the Prior had said, but she closed her eyes and entered her palace and made a very small working—an open net of woven ops to catch the workings of others. It was a working she had learned from Gabriel.

  She released it. And settled like a spider in a web to “see” what she might see in the aethereal.

  She dropped out of her palace and felt her way forward, a portion of her awareness now tucked away in her palace.

  Just at the end of the tunnel, four men were sitting in the shade of a grape arbor in the courtyard.

  One of them was Gabriel—she’d know his voice anywhere. The big man was clearly Ser Thomas—a nose taller than any other man she’d ever met.

  “Gabriel,” she said sharply.

  He rose.

  “There’s something—” she said, and extended her hand.

  He reached out in the real.

  The other two men were almost as big as Ser Thomas—a big red-headed knight of her own Order, who she knew by repute and by the sheer size of his nose. Ser Ricar Orcsbane.

  And a black man the size of a small house, or so it seemed. The men rose as she approached and bowed—the black man very elegantly, by putting his hands together and bending at the waist.

  “Sister Amicia, of the Order of Saint Thomas,” Gabriel said, and repeated it in passable Etruscan. His smile was tired, but warmed her nonetheless.

  In her heart, she thought, I must get him to pay attention.

  “This magnificent gentleman is Ser Pavalo l-Walīd Muḥammad Payam.” Ser Gabriel spoke the name cautiously—for once, it was a language he did not know. But the dark-skinned man bowed again and smiled at the sound of his name.

  “You went to mass,” Amicia said. “I saw you.” She made herself smile, but she seized Gabriel’s hand and tried to drag him by main force into her memory palace.

  “He says he craves your blessing.” Gabriel shrugged. “I have been to mass before and was not slain by lightning, nor do my infernal legions always make trouble.”

  “He took the host,” Tom Lachlan said. “I expected the chapel to collapse.”

  Between one sentence and the next he was there with her.

  “There’s something out there—there. In that direction.” She pointed at the simulacrum of her sensory net in the aethereal, which was ripped asunder somewhere above her and to the north. Direction and distance were not the same in the aethereal as in the real.

  Gabriel looked at the screen of aethereal force she had projected.

  In the real, Amicia put a hand on the dark-skinned man’s hand and said a small prayer for his soul.

  “I tried to get the infidel to come to mass,” Tom said. He grinned. “I mean, if the captain was there, what would one more damned soul matter?”

  Amicia had suddenly had enough. “Don’t mock what you do not understand,” she snapped.

  Tom was seldom baulked. But like most very dangerous men, he was not a fool. He bowed his head. “Sister?” he asked quietly.

  “Something is wrong,” Ser Gabriel said. He was back in the real. He turned to look north. “Toby—my spear.”

  Toby detached himself from a wall and ran for the stables.

  “Amicia, get behind us,” Gabriel said. He still had her hand—and something about his instant willingness to believe her, to obey and react—

  She turned to look.

  Turned back to speak to him. She opened her mouth to say something neither of them would ever be able to forget, and she knew better—fatigue, religion, love, danger—it was a heady potion that transcended day-to-day and common sense, her usual guideposts all thrown down. The sense of wrongness now filled the air around her. Whatever it was, it was aimed for him, not her. She cast a protection, a mirror to confuse whatever the malevolence was; she borrowed his aura and put it on.

  She raised a shield of glowing gold with a twitch of her be-ringed hand.

  Something black fluttered out of the darkness onto her face, right through her shield.

  At its touch, she screamed.

  The Red Knight saw the change in her posture. He tossed the first working in his arsenal—

  Fiat Lux.

  Golden light leapt from a point fifty feet above them.

  It revealed a beautiful horror—six magnificent, shimmering black moths, each the size of a great eagle, their wings the purest black satin shot with veins of blue-black that throbbed with ops and thick velvet-black bodies with elaborate black filigree and lace antennae—and probisci of obscene dimensions, long as baselards and swollen with a velvety hardness that made the skin crawl, tipped with adamant that shone like blued steel.

  One of them fluttered against Amicia even as the light burgeoned.

  Its probiscis throbbed with power and bit—and she screamed.

  The Ifriquy’an’s long, curved sword slipped from the scabbard and flowed out and up like liquid metal in the silver-gold of mixed moonlight and mage light. He was a pace behind Amicia and his sword struck at an angle from the scabbard—severed a great, rapidly beating wing and the probiscis at its base in one strike—the sword passed through its target and swept back, was reversed, and swept back up, almost the same line, cutting off a lock of her hair as her knees gave from the poison and opening the velvet body from base to eye-cases in a shower of ops and potentia and black acid blood.

  Amicia fell in the loose-limbed sprawl of death.

  The Red Knight’s sword snapped from the scabbard and cut into another of the monsters—this one intended for him, wings spread and virulent poison already dripping. His sword slammed into it—and bounced off.

  He’d had a clue that they were aethereal from the sparks. He rolled, a le
ather-soft wing clipped his thigh and something disgustingly velvety touched his hand—his arming sword reached out, striking a panicked blow. But as his point came on line he thrust—the blade tip snagged its material belly and because it was flying and had no anchor, it rebounded. The point, sharp as one of Mag’s needles, had still failed to bite. But it was pushed, tumbling, through fifteen feet of darkness to slam into one of its mates.

  Ser Gabriel realized then that they were all coming for him—but his attention was on Amicia. “They’re magicked!” he shouted. “No mortal weapon will bite!”

  He rolled under the table where the men had been sitting. One of them slipped past Ser Pavalo and landed awkwardly on the table—cups exploded out, and it flipped the table.

  He saw Bad Tom, armed with the dragon’s sword, split another one in half, the two sides lit in a white-veined horror for one beat of a frightened man’s heart, the two wings each beating separately once, ripping the two halves apart and spraying black ichor. Ser Pavalo rolled, passing under a gout of the foul stuff, and rose to strike from beneath a moth with a rising cut—then whirled, and struck again as if gifted with eyes in the back of his head.

  Gavin had no magic sword. He leapt onto the back of the one on the table. It was low and slow, and it didn’t seem to have any weapons that could reach its back—Gavin got his arms under its wings as if putting a small man in a head lock, and pushed the body away from him with both hands and all the passion of abhorrence, and the wings seemed to shred.

  It was all perfectly silent.

  Gabriel saw two of the black velvet horrors unengaged—one attempting to rise over the melee, and the other settling on the prone figure of the dying nun.

  “Amicia!” he screamed.

  He threw himself towards her. In the aethereal, he flooded her bridge with light—and, improvising heartbeat by heartbeat—tried forcing ops back down the bond—first through the ring, and then the strange working on his ankle.

  He refused to accept that the pale corpse on the bridge was hers.