by Tim Akers
“Your secrets go with you,” he whispered. “But you have left poison enough behind. How is she supposed to trust anyone, with those sorts of lies in her ear?”
The priest didn’t answer. Cahl grunted, then made his way to the door. It wouldn’t be long before the guard came back for the body, and it wouldn’t do for Cahl to be found at his side.
Cahl was troubled. Ever since Fianna had been taken by the inquisition, given over by Ian’s father for the sin of saving his wife, Cahl had been on uncertain ground. As the elder of stone, Cahl was used to a firm foundation, but so many things had stopped making sense when Fianna had left him.
A troubled company filled the courtyard of Houndhallow. The Suhdrin knights had formed up near the stables, guarding their mounts and setting up a perimeter around their fires. Most had struck their colors, but a stubborn few wore the bright tabards of their sworn houses. Some had adopted the hound of Blakley, but the Tenerrans of that house clearly didn’t trust them. Whatever their colors, the Suhdrins all watched the surrounding pagan host with nervous eyes, hands on hilts.
The Tenerrans were none better. The few remaining Blakley guards had no love for the pagans who only weeks ago had assaulted their walls and murdered their friends. The few Tenerrans of other houses at Houndhallow seemed to be always in armor, always peering over their shoulders.
For the pagans, life inside the walls of a castle was no more comfortable. They walked in anxious packs, sticking close together like pups trailing after their mother. The pagans spent as much time outside the walls as possible, but the woods were haunted by feral gods that answered to neither the shaman’s commands nor the pagan’s prayers. The fact that this castle belonged to Blakley, the first of the northern tribes to abandon the old faith and bend the knee to the Celestriarch, did little to comfort the pagans’ fears.
It was not a settled company. Each faction had good reason to mistrust the others, and there were swords enough in their number to see everyone dead.
A group of clansmen from the tribe of stones stood around the entrance to the dungeons, keeping watch. Cahl joined them.
“The priest is dead. Gwen didn’t get what she wanted out of him,” he said. “None of us will, now.”
“We tried to warn you she was coming,” one of the pagans, a youth named Caern, whispered. “Did you learn anything?”
“I learned that Gwen Adair doesn’t trust us. Doesn’t trust anyone. Hard to blame her, the problems she’s had.”
“And how are we supposed to trust her, then? A lot of the tribes are looking to her to lead, now that Folam’s dead, and the rest of the elders argue among themselves.”
“May be better if she doesn’t trust anyone. I’d have given Folam Voidfather my life, before he used us to set Suhdra against us. Gods know, Folam might have been in on this from the beginning. Might have been Sacombre’s friend.” Cahl grimaced, staring at a group of Blakley guards as they passed. What if Fianna was part of this, as well? Folam was her father, as the priest said. What poison might she have laid in Ian’s ears? She did talk a lot about grooming Ian to become the Hound of the Hallow, to reclaim his family’s place among the pagan tribes. If she were working for these void priests… Cahl shook his head, grunting. He couldn’t start down that line of thought. He had enough enemies.
“Watch the gates,” he said. “Worst thing that could happen is if they locked us in here, cut us off from the rest of the tribes. Cut us off from the gods.”
“Those things in the woods are no gods of mine,” Caern said.
“No. No, they’re not. But keep watch.”
“And where are you going?”
“Time I talked to Ian. We haven’t seen much of each other since Fianna was taken.”
“His guards are keeping him close. You won’t be able to get within a hundred paces of his lordship,” Caern said with a smirk.
“This is a house of stones,” Cahl said, pushing off from the wall and heading toward the gate. “And I am the elder of stones. I will find a way.”
* * *
Cahl didn’t notice the eyes that watched him walk out of the gate. A group of men, wearing the hound and skulking in the shadows of the gate, signaled to each other. Another man, Suhdrin by birth but wearing the hound on a newly stitched tabard, came out of the gatehouse.
“I will follow him,” Bruler said. “Stay here. Watch his tribesmen.”
“Will you be safe?” one of the guards asked.
“None of us are. Not while that lot walks free through our gates.” He shrugged and loosened his sword. “But I have my orders. Keep safe, and if I don’t come back, see that Sir Blakley is informed.”
4
WHATEVER FRAGMENT OF hope Frair Lucas harbored for finding aid from Sophie Halverdt was crushed by their first sight of Greenhall. The weeks since Tomas Sacombre’s escape and untimely death had brought tales of Halverdt’s zealotry, told by frightened priests of Cinder fleeing south, but Lucas knew of nowhere else to turn. The stories were enough to get Lucas to change out of his vestments and store them in his saddlebags, replacing them with a scholar’s cowl and loose robes. The icons he stowed away in his satchel. His staff he disguised with leather wraps and a thick leather traveler’s parcel. His sole companion, Martin Roard, the heir of Stormwatch, had no need for a disguise; he wore the same simple linen and tabard of red and yellow he’d donned when he’d joined Lucas’s company.
Sacombre was gone, but his servants and fellow heretics were everywhere. If Sophie could separate her hatred for Sacombre from her fear of Cinder’s priests, she would be a valuable ally. If not, a dangerous enemy. And all signs pointed to the latter.
At first, Lucas thought the city was burning. A thick cloud of smoke hung over it, drifting through the streets like a pestilence. Open flames flickered along the parapets. The walls of the city were hung with banners that bore the sigil of Lady Strife in her aspect of crusader, a red sun crossed by a burning sword. Another banner flew from the keep. From a distance it looked like the tri-acorn of Halverdt, crossed in gold, but as they approached the city Lucas was able to make out the details. The acorns were replaced with tongues of flame.
“Lady Halverdt has taken to the faith most strongly,” Lucas said. “There were signs of this when we passed through, but it had not traveled so far.”
“Nor so furiously,” Martin said. He pointed to the former tourney ground, the site of the attacks that started this whole affair. The stands had finally been torn down, but their lumber was repurposed. Rows of x-shaped crosses lined the jousting field. Most were occupied, though their victims were long dead. Flocks of crows wheeled over the field, crying their joy. “She was always a zealot, as was her father. But this is beyond the pale.”
“Who are they even killing? Most of the faithful of Cinder had already fled the last time we were here, and surely there weren’t this many pagans hiding in the slums.” They followed the slow procession of traffic going into the city, which swung in a wide detour, forcing all those who wished to enter to pass by the jousting field and its harvest of crosses. The smell of death disconcerted the horses. “We had better lead the mounts from here. I wouldn’t want to crack my skull in Halverdt’s court.”
A group of men waited at the head of the crossrow. They wore robes of dirty white cloth, their chests emblazoned with the flames and cross of the banner that flew over Greenhall, done in cheap paint with little skill. All of them wore their hair short, though it looked as if their scalps had been burned clean, rather than shorn, and angry red welts traveled down their shoulders and across their faces. Their leader was a man of considerable age, the patchy stubble on his head and face as white as snow.
“A pox on winter, and spring eternal! The bright lady on earth! Light unending!” the man called to the passing travelers. He carried a dented censer, but instead of incense, the brass cage on the end of the chain was filled with burning coals. The man swung it precariously close to any who wandered near. “A crusade on winter! The true light of
the celestial church is risen! This is the dawn, and we are the sun!”
“Gods bless them, but they’re going to kill themselves with those flames,” Martin muttered. The travelers around them kept their heads down, staring at their feet as they passed the zealots. Martin simply stared. “Has some madness gripped this town?”
“Madness, and the bright lady,” Lucas said, glancing up just long enough to take in the rows of dead. “Though this feels like more than Strife’s usual instability. These are peasants, killed for no reason I can see. We have to get to Sophie. We have to figure out what’s going on here.”
“I can tell you what’s going on.” The speaker wore the leather apron and calluses of a blacksmith, though her voice was gentle. “Sophie Halverdt has gone mad. She’s changed Strife’s hope into Cinder’s terror. Gods know how this will end.”
“Not well,” Martin said. The zealots had turned toward him, noticing his stares, and were now preaching their crusade directly to him. He ducked his head and hurried forward. “Surely Sophie is not allowing murder in her streets?”
“It’s not murder if there are no courts,” the smith said. “You’ll not find a judge or inquisitor within a hundred miles of these walls. Not if they know what’s good for them, you won’t.”
Lucas didn’t answer, just pressed forward into the crowd. Their horses followed reluctantly, eyes wide at the fire and the stink of death on all sides. The guards at the gate paid no heed to Martin and Lucas.
Inside the gate, the crowds pressed close on all sides. Lucas was forced to slow to a snail’s pace. The streets were piled with rubble, and many of the buildings were burned out or abandoned.
“Was there an attack here?” Lucas asked. “These people look like they’ve survived something horrific.”
“And the buildings… We were just here, not a month ago. But I saw no signs of an army at their walls. No siegeworks, none of the ravage left by a besieging army. And yet there has clearly been violence.” They came around a corner and caught sight of the old town. A crater lay at the center of the district, and the buildings nearby leaned toward it, like parishioners bowing to an altar. “A great deal of violence,” he said quietly.
“A gheist,” Lucas answered. “If I dared draw on the naether, I’m sure it would be obvious. But what sort of gheist can do this much damage?”
“We both know the answer to that. We were at the Fen Gate. We saw Gwen’s manifestation, and the destruction that she wrought.”
“Four decades I’ve been…” Lucas trailed off, suddenly aware of the ears all around, and the danger of talking about the inquisition. “What happened to Gwen was unusual. It was singular.”
“And yet,” Martin said, nodding to the crater. The road turned, bending toward the keep. Scaffolding climbed the walls, crawling with workers. “Even the keep was damaged.”
“We need to figure out what happened here. And I’m willing to bet that our answers will lie at the center of that crater,” Lucas said.
“Our plan was to go to the keep, to seek Sophie Halverdt’s aid in hunting Sacombre’s rescuers,” Martin said. “Otherwise, why did we come all this way?”
“The plan has changed, young Stormwatch. I don’t think Sophie would hear us, anyway. And I have no interest in being fitted for one of those crosses. This way,” he said, turning down a side alley.
Lucas and Martin moved through the city like rabbits through a field, afraid of the hawks circling overhead. The streets were still crowded, though no one had the attention to spare an old scholar and his man-at-arms.
If the rest of Greenhall was in the throes of religious zealotry, the old town was held in a kind of hallowed tranquility, the sacred heart of silence. The crowds thinned, and the rubble by the side of the road took on a religious weight, as though these tumbledown buildings were the relics of some divine event, as holy as it was destructive.
Some survivors wandered the wreckage. Most were dressed in ragged linen robes, bleached white and bearing the tri-flame and cross. They were sifting through the rubble, searching for fragments of their former lives, or maybe relics of whatever new religion had settled on the people of Greenhall.
“Do you think they’ll rebuild?” Martin asked.
“Not if it’s holy to them. We never rebuilt Cinderfell, did we?” Cinderfell, the holiest site of the god of winter, was the place where Cinder descended to the earth to quench his flames in a lake. The lands around the lake were blasted for miles in all directions, the trees flattened and black.
“That’s different,” Martin said.
“I’m not so sure,” Lucas answered. “The air here is humming… bright. Something happened here. But I wouldn’t call it holy.”
The geography of the city slowly descended, as though the earth collapsed in on itself. The closer they got to the crater, the more difficult the going became. They had to abandon the horses for the last part of their journey. Martin tied them up on a broken beam, behind the remains of a watchtower.
“Gods pray no one steals them,” he said.
“There’s no one here,” Lucas said. “We haven’t seen a soul in twenty minutes.”
“No, we haven’t,” Martin agreed. He looked around at the broken buildings, suppressing a shiver. “But I can’t shake the feeling that we’re being followed.”
Lucas didn’t answer. His eyes were on the crater.
“Something is waiting. Has been waiting, for a long time,” Lucas said.
“Should we continue? Is it safe?”
“No,” Lucas said, then started scrambling down into the crater. Martin loosened his sword and followed.
The final descent was harsh, a steep slide into darkness. Halfway down, Martin wondered aloud if they’d even be able to crawl back out. Lucas didn’t answer. They tumbled the last ten feet, landing in a cloud of dust and scree.
“What is this place?” Martin asked, rolling to his feet. Clouds of dust hung around them, and only a little light came down from above, even though it was nearly noon.
“I don’t know. But I mean to find out. It has a familiar feel to it,” Lucas said. He had brought his satchel of holy items, and took the time to unsling the staff of icons, using it to help him stand. He coughed into his hand as he peered into the darkness. “I have been in such a place before,” he said. “In the Fen.”
“You’re saying this is a hallow?”
“It was. Or something similar. But no, the witches’ hallow in the Fen wasn’t just a place of veneration. It was a tomb, a sanctuary. A place to hide the Fen God from the church.” Lucas raised his hand, and thin lines of purple light trailed from his fingertips. His eyes flashed once, then naether-mist began leaking down his cheeks. He inhaled sharply. “This feels different. Like a prison.”
“Why is there a pagan shrine underneath Greenhall? Gabriel Halverdt was strict in his faith. The man shrouded himself in frairwood, and had his own cadre of inquisitors, to keep the gheist at bay.”
“He may not have known it was here. The hallows used to stretch from shore to shore. Most of the holy sites of the celestial faith are just converted pagan shrines. Greenhall had a henge long before it had a doma. But this doesn’t feel like those places.”
Lucas gestured, and a shower of deep purple sparks fluttered away from him, spiraling through the darkness like fireflies. They landed on stone walls, the remnants of a dome, and a small shrine deep in the shadows. Their light turned the dust hanging in the air into gilt. Lucas grunted.
“This seems the core of it. Do you have a torch?”
Martin went to one knee, swinging his bag onto the ground. In moments he had a flame going, filling the chamber with orange light. Lucas motioned him toward the shrine.
It was small and black, made from some soft, lustrous stone that reflected the torch’s light. The shrine was small, no larger than a wagon’s strong box, but intricately worked. The base of the shrine was carved to resemble a man lying on his back, chest split open and arms thrown wide. A pillar of flowers er
upted from the wound in his heart, the petals spreading wider and wider until they split into five parts, each of which descended to the edges of the shrine. Each descending arc landed on the supine figure, one on each hand and foot, the last on the man’s forehead. Lucas bent to examine it more closely.
“More than petals,” he muttered, running his finger over the pillar. “Blades and bones, a broken skull. All the makings of war. And look,” he turned his attention to the figure’s face. “He’s crying. Joyfully.”
“Do you know what god this represents?” Martin asked.
“The true god of summer.” The voice came from the lip of the crater. Martin lifted the torch, though that only served to blind him. Lucas pushed the torch aside, peering up at the speaker.
It was a boy, or half a boy. He had a child’s height, but one side of his head was covered in white, brittle hair, like an old man. When he swept the cascade of hair aside, they could see that half of his face hung in wrinkles and age spots, while the other side was smooth and young, if haunted. The hand on that side was thin, knotted with arthritis, the skin hanging in loose, spotted folds.
“I knew you would come,” the boy said. “That is why he spared me. To be here, when you came, to protect the place of his birth.”
“I have no interest in hurting a child,” Martin said. He held his hands well away from his blade. “Don’t make me do anything we’ll both regret.”
“The child has no interest in hurting you, either,” the boy said, yet this time the decrepit half of his face was more animated, and his voice growled with the roughness of age. “But I have no such compunction.”
“Tell us who you are!” Lucas shouted. The boy’s wrinkled face smiled, but the young eye started to weep. Lucas turned to Martin. “Be ready to run.”