by Tom Lloyd
'I need to speak to Cardinal Eleil,' Shanatin said in a quiet voice.
'The cardinal?' The sergeant snorted. 'Gen'rally speakin', he don't bother with any damn stray that wanders in.'
Cardinal Eleil, once head of the Serian in the Circle City, the Devoted's intelligence-gathering arm, was now High Priest Garash's deputy on the Devout Congress. While Garash was the driving force behind this moral vigilance within the Knights of the Temples, it was Eleil who administrated and instituted Garash's reforms.
'It's important,' Shanatin insisted, dropping his eyes to look at the sergeant's scuffed boots. The man looked like a bully to Shanatin; he just had to hope he looked cowed already.
The sergeant was silent a moment. 'Better be,' he muttered before walking past Shanatin and jerking open the main door. 'Hey, you – where's Chaplain Fynner?' he asked someone inside.
Shanatin didn't hear a reply, but the sergeant stepped back and a few seconds later a tall, white-haired man in the dark red robes of a chaplain came out.
'What is it?' Fynner asked in a deep, rich voice.
'Witchfinder's askin' for the cardinal, Father,' the sergeant explained, pointing at Shanatin. 'Says it's important.'
The chaplain frowned at Shanatin, who wilted under the look.
'Very well,' said Fynner with resignation, 'come with me.'
Shanatin followed him into the large, chilly hall. It was still bright inside; orange-tinted sunlight streamed in through the windows lining the wall above the door and lamps were lit below. There appeared to be no one looking down over the room, but a dozen or so priests of various ranks were busy at the lower desks.
Once the door had shut behind Shanatin, Fynner rounded on him. 'So, Witchfinder, you'll have to convince me before you see anyone,' Fynner said sternly.
'Yes, Father,' Shanatin mutter respectfully. 'I… I overheard somethin' I shouldn't of a few days back. I been keepin' my eyes open since then and I don't think he's the only one.'
'The only what?'
Shanatin hesitated. 'Mage; a mage off the books.'
'You are talking about an officer of the Order? That is a serious charge, young man; a very serious charge for an enlisted to make.'
'I know, sir, important officer too.'
Fynner looked around the room. The other priests seemed to be busy with their work and oblivious to what was going on, but still he beckoned for Shanatin to follow him to one end of the hall, where they went through a door. Without a further word Fynner took him up a short flight of stairs, past a sentry and into the private quarters of the cardinal.
'Cardinal Eleil is eating,' he explained at last when they reached one doorway, 'which may be for the best; this is sensitive information after all.'
Shanatin nodded, looking relieved. Fynner knocked and entered without waiting for a response, ushering Shanatin inside and shutting the door behind him.
'Fynner?' inquired the cardinal, seated alone at the head of a polished mahogany table and with a laden fork raised.
Shanatin felt his mouth start to water as the aroma of roast pork filled his nostrils. He could see roasted apples and potatoes on the plate, all liberally doused in thick nut-brown gravy. For a moment all thoughts of his mission were forgotten – until Chaplain Fynner cleared his throat pointedly and Shanatin realised he was staring open-mouthed at the food.
'My apologies, Cardinal Eleil, but this man has just brought a matter to my attention that I felt sure you would want to hear.'
'Well?'
Cardinal Eleil was older than Shanatin had assumed; his face wrinkled and weathered, his hair perfectly white, which indicated he was probably pure Litse blood.
'Ah, your Grace,' Shanatin stuttered, giving an awkward bow.
The error put a slight smile on the cardinal's face, as Shanatin had hoped. He inclined his head to acknowledge Shanatin's respect and took a swig of wine while the witchfinder started to speak.
'I was comin' back from… ah, meetin' a friend, four nights back – past midnight. I was out past curfew so I was sneakin' back into the Brew House, but before I got in I saw two men speakin' in the shadows. I hung back 'til they left. One o' them was Sergeant Timonas, see, from the witchfinders.'
He hesitated and glanced at Fynner, who gestured for him to keep going. 'Right, well, the other were an officer, and he bought some dose off of Timonas, gave him money, right in front of me. For more than one person too – brew don't last too long after it's cooked, and I reckon Timonas gave him enough for two, maybe three. Before the officer left he told Timonas to make damn sure he was doin' the next inspection too. The sarge said the schedules had bin worked out right an' it was all sorted.'
The cardinal leaned forward, his meal forgotten. 'Did you recognise the officer?'
'Yes, sir. It were Captain Perforren, the Knight-Cardinal's adjutant.'
The two priests exchanged a look, then Fynner spoke. 'You are certain that was what was being discussed? There is no room for confusion or explanation?'
'No, sir, they was clear enough, an' I recognised the bottles Timonas gave Perforren – they're the ones we use for the dose.'
Shanatin fell silent, letting the news sink in. The Order's laws were specific: all mages within their ranks had to be registered and monitored. A man with ambitions, however, would know any ability as a mage would count against him when it came to promotion – certainly no mage would ever be elected to the Council, and Captain Perforren was aide to the man who had led that Council for years. Corruption, bribery, wilful flouting of the Codex… these were all breaches of the law, and they added up to a capital offence.
'They did not mention who the others were?' Cardinal Eleil asked at last.
Shanatin shook his head.
'Then we must move cautiously. What is your name, Witchfinder? '
'Shanatin, your Grace.'
'Then, Witchfinder Shanatin, under the Second Investigation Act you are hereby co-opted into the Devout Congress. Add his name to the register of devout, Fynner.'
The chaplain bowed as Cardinal Eleil continued, 'Shanatin, you will return to your duties and investigate further. Monitor this sergeant and secure a copy of the schedule for the next… how long does the dose last?'
'Up to a fortnight, sir.'
'Very well, the next three weeks. You will be contacted in the next few days by someone who will act as your liaison from now on. Do nothing that will alert them. This conspiracy may be bigger than we have seen thus far.'
The cardinal's tone made it clear the meeting was over. Shanatin didn't seem to notice, but Fynner did and took the witchfinder's arm, directing him outside again. The chaplain lingered a moment longer in case the cardinal wanted to speak to him further, but he had already returned to his pork. Fynner shrugged and accompanied Shanatin outside.
Once the door was closed Cardinal Eleil sat staring at it a while, slowly chewing the meat while he thought. He was naturally suspicious – a lifetime of the Serian did that to a man, and Witchfinder Shanatin had prickled his paranoia.
'He's just the sort I'd use myself,' he mused, spearing a piece of apple and holding it up to inspect. 'Simple and stupid, too obviously a fool to be a good ruse, and therein lies his value.'
He ate the apple, enjoying the sensation of the cooked fruit melting inside his mouth.
'An attempt to discredit the Congress?' he said eventually before shaking his head. 'No, surely anyone trying to make us act rashly would take such information to Garash instead. Misdirection perhaps? Have us waste our efforts on the Knight-Cardinal's men so others find a little more freedom to move?'
He finished the pork, saving the crackling until last. The first piece he tried was overcooked, too solid for his ageing teeth so he sucked the juices off it and discarded it in favour of other bits.
'There is of course the possibility that the fat cretin is telling the truth,' he had to admit finally, 'that he's stumbled across something and seen a way to profit from it.'
He pushed the plate aside and st
ood. Immediately something caught his eye, a small glint half-obscured by a chair near the door. Curious, the cardinal tilted his head sideways. It appeared to be a coin, a gold coin, lying on the floor.
'Where have you come from?' Eleil asked the coin, rounding the table. 'Did I not notice you when I came in? I can't believe Witchfinder Shanatin would have any call to be carrying gold with him, nor Fynner.'
He stood over the coin, looking down at it, but making no effort to pick it up. The coin was large, but not one he recognised, certainly not Circle City currency. While each quarter had its own, none of the gold coins used there were even similar. After a moment he crouched to pick the coin up, hissing at the clicks in his knees as he did so.
The coin was a thin disc, half the width of his palm, flattened at the rim to produce a very dull edge. There was nothing on it to indicate its origin; it wasn't really a coin at all since there was no sign of currency stamped on it. He carried it back around to the table and set it down, peering closely at it.
'So what are you then?' he asked.
Now he could see that symbols had been badly engraved onto the surface, around a crude cross. Something about that made him think of Elven core runes, but his education on such matters was limited. The cross was not composed of single lines, but half a dozen or so roughly parallel grooves.
He picked up the coin and was about to turn it over when he felt a tingle in his fingertips. On a whim he placed it upright on its edge and turned it around instead of flipping it over. The other side also had a strange script engraved on the surface, so lightly it looked almost like scratches, but the main symbol was a circle of several grooves around the flattened edge. The coin – disc – was old, and the gold had more than a few minor dents and scratches, but still Cardinal Eleil could see a distorted reflection within the polished circle. He turned it again, then flicked it with his fingernail to set it spinning on its edge.
As he watched the runes and faint reflection merge, he thought he heard a tiny sound from somewhere behind, the softest of whispers. He jerked around, but there was no one there. Doors set with two panes of glass led out onto a balcony, but he could see no one though the panes and the bolts top and bottom, out of reach of anyone breaking the small windows, remained firmly closed.
'Foolishness,' he muttered, and returned to the coin, which was lying flat on the tabletop, cross side up. Again he put it on its edge and set it spinning to watch the two sides merge. It reminded him of a toy he'd once had as a child, a piece of painted wood on strings which, when turned quickly, merged the image of a bird on one side with the cage on the other.
A susurrus sigh came from his right and the cardinal half-jumped out of his seat. He slapped a palm down onto the coin as he turned to where he'd heard the sound. There was no one there; nothing was disturbed, and the only piece of furniture that could possible have hidden someone, a padded recliner he often took an afternoon nap on, was at such an angle that it would have been impossible.
He resisted the urge to ask, 'Who's there?' and rose instead. He went to the bureau against the wall behind him. With one eye on the far side of the room he pressed a catch just inside the footwell and opened one of the drawers, reaching inside to pull a thin dagger from its hiding place.
With that in his hand he advanced to the other end of the room. The light was starting to fade and Cardinal Eleil realised the room was gloomier than he'd realised while eating. This end of his study had only one small window, above head-height. Set into the wall was an elegant fireplace with a tallboy on either side and a gilt-framed mirror above.
He glanced back at the coin, on the table where he'd left it. Its warm yellow colour looked markedly out of place in the dimly lit room. A slight scratching sound came from the wall by the door and he whipped around – to see nothing there at all… but his heart gave a lurch when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something reflected in the mirror. He faced the wood-panelled wall, but still he saw nothing unusual there at all, and when he looked back at the mirror it was empty.
'Gods, am I going mad?' he whispered, his fingers tightening around the grip of his knife.
He looked back at the other end of the room, almost certain that for a moment he'd seen someone stood in the corner there – a grey figure – but it remained steadfastly empty. When he inspected the mirror that too looked fine, free of dust or dirt that might blur the image.
Again he heard a tiny whisper somewhere behind him, this time more like the rustle of pages, and so faint it was nearly drowned out by the frantic drumming of his heart. Each of the tallboys had glass-fronted shelving at the top, filled with leather-bound books. Nothing within them moved.
He waited a while, standing still and listening until he was forced to breathe deeply. Immediately there came a different sound, like fingertips being brushed gently against the wallpaper of the far wall. When he looked the sound faded to nothing, leaving him uncertain whether he'd heard anything at all.
'Ah, my imagination's playing tricks on me now,' Cardinal Eleil declared rather more boldly than he felt. 'You're a foolish old man whose hearing isn't as good as it once was, nothing more.'
He opened one of the glass cases and ran his fingers down the spines of the books. 'I refuse to pander to my imagination,' he said aloud, finding the book he was looking for, 'so I'll look up that rune instead.'
He flicked through the pages of the book with forced briskness, finding the section he was after easily enough. His familiarity with Elven runes was only very basic, limited to what he'd learned over the years within the Serian. The knife he kept in hand, underneath the book. It was an ornate weapon with a slim guard, gaudy but wickedly sharp.
Heretical academics frequently used the runes in their correspondence to each other, often using them for code, though sometimes the cardinal suspected it was mere pretension on their part. The closeted idiots had no conception of the dangers their research could result in. The Serian had saves thousands of lives over the course of his service, stopping reckless and foolish academics playing with forces far beyond their control.
'Aha,' he announced to the empty room, 'here we are. Azhi? Azhai?' he read, fumbling slightly over the pronunciation since the book was written in Farlan, 'and it means… oh. Well, not a lot.' He sighed and glanced up at the room to check. It was still empty.
'Azai; a concept requiring context, potentially implying weakness or absence,' he read aloud. 'Other possibilities are substitution, usurpation, manipulation or corruption. At its most basic it can mean the shadow of something.'
His eyes flicked up to the mirror and he gave a gasp. At the corner of his vision he saw a faint movement on one side – too quick to catch, indeed, could have been the flash of an eyelash or trick of an ageing eye – but it had looked as though someone peeking through a window had ducked to the side of it.
He checked the room again, knife held ready, but there was absolutely no one there… but still he imagined soft whispers on the edge of hearing from the far corners of the room. Heart hammering, feeling both foolish and terrified at the same time, he moved back to the mirror and edged carefully around it, as though wary of something reaching out from the reflection. There was nothing there; the reflection showed an empty room and nothing more -
He turned away, but as he did so he glimpsed a face, grey and formless in the glass, as though staring straight over his shoulder. Cardinal Eleil yelped with terror, dropping the book as he tripped over his own feet in his haste to turn. Behind him there was nothing, no man or shadow beyond those cast naturally.
The room was grey now, a layer of gloom covering everything as twilight began its reign over the Land. With shaking hands Cardinal Eleil looked down at the book, but he couldn't bring himself to retrieve it. It could stay there for the night happily enough. Only his trembling knees that threatened to give way underneath him prevented him from fleeing the room entirely.
The ageing cardinal gripped the mantelpiece in an effort to steady himself, but as he did so the
whispers from the far corners of the room increased. A fresh lurch of panic surged through his body. He looked into the mirror and for a moment thought he could see a faint shadowy face in the gloom, smiling malevolently over his shoulder. Then the image faded and he realised he'd been holding his breath out of fear. He put both hands on the reassuringly solid mantelpiece and bowed his head, his eyes closed as he drew in heaving breaths of air.
'It's pronounced "Az-ae-ir",' came a murmur in his ear.
A moan of terror escaped his lips as pain flared in his chest. His eyes flashed open again, but this time the mirror was empty. A chill whisper of breath brushed his ear and Cardinal Eleil fell, his chest wrapped in burning agony.
Ilumene leaned forward over the bed, a cruel smile on his face and a dagger in his fingers. The tower bedroom was dark, lamps still unlit though Blackfang's shadow made the twilight even darker. Ruhen lay on the bed, fully dressed and laid out like a corpse, but as Ilumene watched his eyelids flickered and his lips twitched. There was a slight movement in the small boy's cheek, then another. His eyebrows trembled… At last his lips parted and Ruhen gasped for breath, as though returning to life.
'Old ones still the best, eh?' Ilumene said with a grin.
Ruhen turned his head to look at the big soldier from Narkang, the ghost of a smile on his face. He nodded solemnly as shadows danced in his eyes.
Venn turned to the yellow eye of Alterr and listened to the silence around him. He stood at a tall arched window, opened wide to admit the cool night breeze. Capan stood at his side, and behind them were two of his best fighters. Each of the Harlequins was silent and motionless, waiting for the signal that their Oracle was satisfied.
His three companions still wore their brightly patterned clothes. Their white masks shone in the greater moon's weak light, while the bloody teardrops on their faces looked perfectly black.
'Lomin sleeps,' he said after a long moment. 'It is time.'