The Archbishop's Amulet (The Windhaven Chronicles Book 2)

by Watson Davis

  On the low table before the inner garden, dinner waited, tendrils of smoke snaking up into the air. He lowered himself, setting his knees on the pillow before the table, before his evening repast, removing the dagger from his sash, the dagger of his office as overseer of the monastery’s slaves, a privileged position, but only a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

  A gong sounded, unexpected, not loud, like the rustling of the leaves. With the food before him and his mouth prepared to receive it, Fi Cheen ignored the interruption, taking a sensual bite, acting like he’d heard nothing, letting whichever master who wished to speak to him wait, or at least come back at a time other than when a civil being enjoys his dinner. Only a rude boor would interrupt a person at dinner time, and rude boors can wait.

  The gong sounded once more. Fi Cheen stopped, chopsticks hovering over a dumpling, brow furrowing, considering the timbre of the gong, an unusual sound, not the sound of a guest, not the sound of a visitor. No, he had not heard this sound since he had been raised to the office of overseer and the preceding overseer introduced the sound to him, introduced it to him in the explanation of his responsibilities, the responsibilities of the overseer.

  The gong sounded a third time. The dumpling beneath his nose, his lips open, Fi Cheen’s appetite ceased, disappearing from the world completely, and he dropped the dumpling back into the broth. His tongue, now desiccated and dry as a corpse left out in the desert sun, stuck to the roof of his mouth. He stumbled through the hall, his legs stiff, to his workroom, a room he hated and so never set foot in except when necessary.

  With the aid of the empress’ wealth of knowledge and wisdom, the previous masters of the monasteries throughout the empire, masters who ruled there for generations before Diyune and his new northern monastery, cast a powerful set of spells to monitor the collars put on monastic slaves, a spell far beyond Fi Cheen’s understanding even though he counted himself a master of such things, a spell he considered merely a sign of the paranoia of the early masters, a spell he’d never imagined would be used. On a black slate wall, runes of light floated, a rune for each of the collars on each of the sacrifices, the color indicating a status.

  He stood there, mouth open, eyes blinking, rubbing his hands together, thoughts tumbling through his mind, precious time slipping past. The gong sounded once more before he brushed his fingertips on the wall, silencing that irritating sound.

  One rune glowed red, an angry red, an accusing red. He lifted his hand, his fingertips sliding through the red rune. The name: Cole. The Morrin princeling. The status: attached. Location: moving fast through the countryside toward Morrin, of course. Fi Cheen exhaled.

  One rune glowed an orangish-yellow, and Fi Cheen slid his finger across the rune, accessing the information. The name: Lord Silmon. The status: disconnected-deceased.

  Three runes glowed green. He touched the uppermost one.

  The name: Caldane. The status: freed. Location: unknown—the collar having been removed not in the hell where he should have been destroyed but in a village named Fizer, a village close by with connections to the monastery.

  Fi Cheen yelled in rage, striking out at the empty air with his fists, kicking it with his feet, cursing the Onei, imagining the Onei’s body pulled apart by devils and demons from every hell, his whining soul dragged into the pits to be raped, incinerated, obliterated, put back together, and raped again for an eternity, the bits of his body strewn around the altar like rose petals before an orgy. He imagined spitting on every part of the foul beast.

  The damned Onei’s collar had been unlocked. Unlocked?

  The Coulven girl’s collar? The brewer’s son, Rucker? He accessed the other two green statuses, gnawing on his lip, running his hands over the runes, information popping up, the name of the slave, where they were, the same as Caldane, freed in Fizer.

  They must have coerced a priest, a skilled priest to remove them, or a slave driver.

  What am I going to do?

  Fi Cheen pulled at his bottom lip, his right fist pressing into his lower back.

  I should tell Archbishop Diyune.

  He shook his head, snorting.

  What? What could I tell him? Tell him I neglected to check the lists—one of the duties and responsibilities of my station—after his catastrophic backfire? Tell him all the slaves were accounted for except for a paltry three who happened to go missing, three he asked me about? Yes. Of course. I could tell him those things. And bend down to allow one of the assistants who lust after my job to place a collar around my own neck. I could prepare my mind and spirit to be sacrificed along with the other slaves at the next alignment.

  Or I could take care of this myself.

  Fi Cheen rubbed his hands together, breathing on them, nodding.

  Yes.

  I will take care of this myself.

  A smile crept across Fi Cheen’s face, realizing he would need help, the girl’s name occurring to him: Lyu-ra. Of course. He knew that.

  A Mother in Timyiskil

  “This is a good spot,” I said. The dry, rocky ground sloped down to a stream, plenty of aged wood for a fire in addition to the branches and sticks collected on the way, surrounded by tall pine trees. I whistled and our new horse, a horse we acquired from the sheriff’s stable, a palomino Rucker had named Spot, stopped and wriggled his head, shaking his mane.

  “A good Spot?” Rucker snorted, laughing. “Funny!”

  “Thank all the gods.” Aissal stopped with the horse, a horse she refused to mount but had no problem walking beside and leaning on, some nonsense about stealing. Breathing hard, patting Spot’s flank, Aissal glared back at me. “I want to examine those tattoos.”

  “My tattoos?” I studied my forearm, touching the black glyphs and runes burned into me, remembering the burning, Diyune’s fingernails stabbing, cutting, slicing across my skin, his fingernails glowing with heat and power. My breath quivered coming out of my mouth, my throat tightening at the memories. I swallowed, mouth drier than the dirt below my feet, reaching back to reposition the amulet against my back. I pointed back down our route, well away from the road, off the normal trails. “I need to retrace our steps and cast some more spells to obscure our tracks.”

  “You’ve cast enough spells to remove our tracks.” Aissal rose up on her tiptoes by the horse’s side, reaching up to Rucker, offering to help him down.

  “I can do it.” He grimaced, trying to slide himself around, his fingers twined in Spot’s mane. “I don’t need help from a girl.”

  “Come on.” Aissal didn’t move her hands, but rolled her eyes, smiling, saying, “Big boy.”

  “Stop.” Rucker sighed, leaning over toward her, letting her place her hands into his armpits, pulling him off the horse, setting him on the ground.

  Silent, I moved away, head bowed, back down our trail, putting a bush between us, a tree.

  “Caldane?” Aissal called. “Where’d you go?”

  I stopped, unbending, composing myself, listening.

  Squirrels ran through the trees, jumping from limb to limb, bushy tails held out behind them for balance. A light breeze with a hint of coming rain wound its way through the branches of the pinoak trees, the brown leaves raining down, floating through the air. Rucker, wincing with each step, his ass sore from riding the horse, rummaged through the dead leaves around camp, clearing a space, looking for stones, rushing to build a fire and summon water since I taught him the spells, even though a stream burbled a short distance away.

  “I know you can hear me,” she said, raising her voice, a hint of desperation in her tone.

  I sauntered forward into her line of sight, letting her see me, looking at my fingernails as though thinking about something else until I realized I’d copied the motion from Diyune, and jerked my hand away, straightening my fingers. I glanced up, eyes wide, trying to feign innocence. “Huh?”

  She glared at me, arms crossed over her chest. “Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong?” I looked around, pushin
g my fingers through my hair. Of course, some things were wrong. “No, just worried about getting recaptured.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I can’t tell if you’re lying.”

  She limped over to me, the leaves crunching beneath her soft-soled leather boots.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Use your spells to help you and Rucker. You’re both exhausted and sore from traveling.”

  Her hand touched my arm and I held myself still, fighting the urge to draw away, to shiver, to run. She pressed her lips together, the ends of her mouth rising, a smile of gratitude, appreciation. “That’s sweet. I didn’t expect you to be such a gentleman.”

  “Right.” I gulped and stared out into the forest, not at anything in particular, just not wanting to gawk at her, her light blue skin like a hazy sky, white hair like fresh powder fallen after a blizzard, so alien, the point of her chin, the angle of her brow. “We should make Timyiskil early, but a rain might be coming.”

  “Well.” She smiled, her voice growing peppy, cheerful. “You keep thinking about that.”

  Rucker piled branches on a circle of rocks set up. He started laughing and pointed at me, saying, “Is this a good Spot? Get it?”

  “Not so close to the tree.” I stepped toward Rucker, planning not to help him, but to use him for my escape.

  "I was joking," Rucker called out, frowning.

  Aissal put her hand on my chest, stopping me, her hand glowing blue, her lips moving, murmuring a spell. Her head tilted to the side, all laughter gone from her squinting eyes. “You are a liar.”

  “Liar?” I licked my lips, shrugging. “Me? I don’t—”

  “Take your shirt off.” She tugged at the buttons on the front of my shirt, her hands flying down my shirt with a well-practiced experience gained removing shirts from the injured and ill.

  “It’s just… I mean to say that…”

  “Take it off, and sit down by the tree,” she ordered, directing me to where she wanted me, her fingers digging into my arms, her hand pushing against my shoulder.

  I sighed, sounding like a spoiled child denied of his desires even to my own ears. She was going to do what she was about to do, and I couldn’t stop her short of shedding her blood. I slid my shirt down my arms, tossing it aside, reaching back behind me and pulling out the amulet, wrapped in blood-stained silk.

  She blinked, studying the package in my hand. “What is that?”

  I sat down where she wanted me, the bark of the tree biting into my back, crossing my legs, setting the amulet in my lap, unwrapping it.

  “Caldane?” She followed me, kneeling beside me. “What is that?”

  “The archbishop’s amulet,” I said. “He used this during every sacrifice. I suspect he used it in opening the gates to the other realms and navigating through them.”

  “How did you get it?” she asked.

  “From the rubble.”

  “You’ve been carrying this around since then?”

  “Yes.”

  She murmured an incantation, shining sparkles floating up from her fingertips, floating gently, lazily up into the air, swirling, dancing back and forth following unseen tides, unfelt winds. “Why can’t I see it with my magesight?”

  “An old Onei spell of hiding,” I said. I moved my hand, deflecting the spell, peeling back a portion of it so she could peek through.

  Waving her hands over the amulet, her voice distant and distracted, her eyes sparkled with tiny motes of magic, glowing. She shook her head. “So much infernal power. We have to destroy it.”

  “Too powerful for me,” I said, flicking my hand, closing the hiding spell. “You think you can?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “I figure it’s best to keep it away from Diyune as long as I can. Maybe he’ll hurt fewer people without it.”

  Aissal nodded, pursing her lips, twisting her head away, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yes. Right. Fine. Let’s have look at you, then.”

  I shifted searching for a comfortable position, situating my shoulders, shifting again, licking my lips, blowing out my breath. “I could use a drink of water.”

  “Be still.” Her eyes drifted up to my torso, my arms, her hands touching me, tracing ethereal streams of magic from rune to rune, symbol to symbol, shuddering.

  “I summoned some water.” Rucker ran over to me with a cup I’d whittled for him from a tree branch. “Let me know if this hits the…Spot. Get it?”

  “I got it.” I chuckled, taking the cup from him with my left hand. A dark, brackish excuse for water filled the cup, an acrid steam rising from it.

  “Um.” I grimaced. “I think we need some more practice.”

  “Shut up and be still,” Aissal said, taking the cup from my hands, without looking at it, without moving her eyes from what she analyzed, from me, handing the cup back to Rucker. She leaned in, her eyes moving up and down, side to side, whispering to herself, her hands rotating, fingers twitching. “This is…”

  “I know.”

  Her eyes strayed up to meet mine. “You know what?”

  “Enough,” I said. “I’ve cast my own magesight spell since we took the collars off. I looked down, saw the tattoos Diyune seared into me, tethered to my soul. I saw the spells, how they were woven.”

  “These spells,” she said, her voice low and delicate, but emotionless as though she were trying to distance herself from her loathing. “They are vile. They are covenants with devils and demons in more hells than I even knew existed.”

  “You thought Diyune and the empire sacrificed people, children, magic-users, to create spells of consummate goodness, pacts with angels and cherubim, bettering everyone’s lives, maybe?” I shook my head, laughing, my face feeling hot.

  “We have to break these spells.” Aissal traced a tattoo with her fingernail, invoking the memory of Diyune, causing me to shiver with revulsion. She swallowed. “Revoke these pacts.”

  “That’s all well and good.” I ran the fingertips of my right hand down my left forearm, staring at the runes and glyphs. “This sorcery is so far beyond me, I can’t even comprehend how they work. Are you good enough to tease these threads apart?”

  “No. But. Not yet.” She stood, leaves crackling under her weight, hanging on to the knees of her pants. She crossed her arms over her chest, her mouth pinching together in anxiety. “Maybe with some training and some study, or if we can find a master to help. If we can decipher the runes, what they mean, what they symbolize, maybe that will give us some clue.”

  The sky now dark above us, only the light of Rucker’s fire held the shadows back, the fire flickering, casting long shadows, red and yellow, thick smoke rising up.

  Rucker squatted behind Aissal, eyes unfocused, lips pursed.

  “Something wrong?” I asked, leaning away from Aissal to see him better, wrapping the silk around the amulet.

  “Oh. Yeah. How far are we?”

  “A little less far than the last time you asked,” I said. “We’ll be there when we’re there.”

  # # #

  The outskirts of Timyiskil bustled with noxious activities, brewing, tanning, butchery, the people flitted about busy with their daily chores, every one of them hard at work, no one looking at us as though they assumed we were three more citizens hard at work, doing our jobs. The sun beat down hot, although the air was crisp and cool. A dust rose up from the road, brownish and gritty and dry.

  I struggled to breath without gagging on the stench.

  “The woman who lives there makes great pies.” Rucker rocked on Spot’s back, bouncing in the saddle with nervous energy, his head turning this way and that, pointing out landmarks in the wood, white plaster, and stone houses on the outskirts of Timyiskil, an old city with high walls of brown stone, towers spiraling into the sky. His nose appeared impervious to the stench, unlike mine. He stood in the stirrups, pointing at a building well off the street. “Oh, and my best friend lives in that apartment building over there.”

  Aissal
walked at Spot’s head, the reins in her left hand more to keep them from dragging on the ground and winding up beneath Spot’s hooves than to direct the horse, who trudged along, head down in submission, one ear forward, the other following me, listening for commands. Aissal kept her right hand beneath her nose, only moving it to bat at the flies.

  Smacking my arm to kill something I felt crawling there, finding nothing when I drew my hand back, I slipped the canteen from the saddlebags and poured water in my mouth, keeping my nose closed against the stink, holding the water in my cheeks, swishing it around before swallowing, stoppering the canteen and sticking it back into the saddlebags, my hand swiping at something buzzing around my head.

  A well-fed woman swept the wooden sidewalk with a broom of rushes tied to a long, knobby wooden pole. I looked her in the eye as I swished the water around in my mouth, between my teeth before swallowing it. To be polite, I smiled at her and nodded, but she continued her sweeping, never acknowledging me, never acknowledging any contact, staring past me with dead eyes that could have been bored except even then, there would have been more animation, more life. I wondered if I’d left the collar around my neck, if she hadn’t seen me, or if the spell I’d cast to disguise my features, to hide my Onei-complexion and hair, had gone too far and made me invisible, which would be a great spell to know, but not one in my repertoire.

  We walked past, but I watched her as I went on, swatting at a gnat or something crawling on my neck. She moved about her work, sweeping the porch with a mechanical precision, until she stopped, set the broom aside and sauntered through the door into the shop.

  Every person I passed on the street, I stared at, nodding, touching my forehead in respect, trying to meet their eyes, trying to get some sort of acknowledgment, some sort of communication. The hair on the back of my neck rose. I swatted at another fly tickling my ear.

  “Aissal?” I said, peering over the horse at her, pinching my nose.