The Heresy Within

by Rob J. Hayes

  He cut away the remaining plants restraining him and limped towards the Inquisitor. She was staring at the blood in her hand, as she looked up at Thanquil he could see her nose was bent, broken, her small mouth and delicate, pointed chin were stained red, her eyes held all the fury of a raging fire. If Thanquil hadn't been trying to kill her he would have liked very much to run away from those eyes.

  The Inquisitor dug a hand into a pocket of her coat and pulled out a small chip of wood. She snapped it between thumb and fingers and threw the two pieces of wood at Thanquil. He crouched down ready to spring into action and waited. Nothing happened. Slowly he shifted his weight from his bad ankle to his good one, breathing heavily from the tension. Sucking air into his lungs and out like a bellows.

  Inquisitor Heron pointed her long, black, serrated sword at Thanquil and he wheezed in a breath, waiting for the rune to take effect. The way the light caught her sword made it look as if the colouring on the surface of the metal was shifting, moving. A swirling darkness within the blade. She charged.

  Thanquil sucked in another breath, panicking. There was no air; he was suffocating out in the open. He dropped to one knee, gasping. His limbs felt so heavy, so slow, almost like the whole world was pressing in around him, on top of him, crushing him.

  The Inquisitor's first swing sent Thanquil's sword spinning out of his hand into the darkness of the night, her second almost took off his left arm but he managed to stumble backwards just in time, not fast enough to stop a new cut opening. Her third attack would have skewered him but Thanquil stepped around it and close to her again. He put both hands on her chest and with his last breath whispered a blessing of strength and pushed. The Inquisitor flew away from him into the unnatural darkness waiting behind. Thanquil stumbled backwards, looking for his sword. There in the distance he saw a glint of light on metal and crawled towards it, when he'd fallen to his hands and knees he wasn't sure.

  All of a sudden he could breathe again. Cool, crisp air rushed into his lungs making him cough and sputter but he was glad of it. Life flooded back into his limbs. The world no longer closed in around him, crushing him. He looked back at the rune on the earth behind him, powerful magic and far beyond his own capabilities. He had the sinking feeling he was over-matched in this fight. Still he crawled over to his sword and stood, blade in hand ready to face the Inquisitor's next attack.

  She was nowhere to be seen. Darkness closed in thick around the Arbiter and he glanced first one way then the other but the Inquisitor seemed to be nowhere. He looked up, thick black-grey clouds had gathered, arraying themselves above to shut out all light and even the hanging lanterns only seemed to illuminate small patches of the darkness.

  “I'm disappointed, Thanquil.” The voice echoed from behind him. Thanquil spun around and squinted into the darkness but saw nothing. He whispered a blessing of sight and there she was, no more than twenty paces away staring at him as if the darkness was as bright as a summer’s day. A sad smile graced her face but it only made her look like a ghoul with the crimson mask of blood running from her nose.

  “They told me you excelled with runes and charms and blessings but here you are falling for child's tricks and relying on brute force.” Her voice floated out of the darkness at him.

  Thanquil might have laughed at her calling that rune a child's trick. He hadn't even known it was possible to do such a thing. He wasn't even sure what it had done but he'd be damned if he was falling for it a second time.

  He was preparing for an attack of his own when he noticed the chip out of his sword. An enchanted blade with a charm that should mean the edge never dulled, the blade would never break but there it was; a small chip of metal missing.

  “What in Volmar's name is your sword made from?” Thanquil called out.

  Inquisitor Heron laughed a warm, merry sound that might have made Thanquil smile had the two of them not been trying to kill each other. “You've noticed that have you?”

  A knife flew out of the darkness towards Thanquil. He raised his sword to deflect it away and broke the paper rune wrapped around the knife. Before he knew it both his sword and his entire right arm had burst into flame.

  With a yell Thanquil dropped his sword and fell backwards. He started rolling on the ground, trying to put the fire out but succeeded only in lighting more of his coat on fire. He struggled out of the burning leather and scrambled away. His right hand was a mass of pain, red-black skin and blood and blisters so Thanquil scooped up his sword in his left and stood, trying to find the Inquisitor in the darkness. He glanced back at his coat once, still burning away. All his carefully prepared charms and runes were in the pockets of that coat. All of his runes!

  He lurched into a sprint, not caring where he ran as long as it was away from the coat.

  BOOM!

  The world turned upside down and inside out as the explosive runes inside the coat activated all at once. Thanquil found himself rolling to a stop on the grassy earth, his eyes wet with tears from the pain in his hand. Smoke and dust filled the air, bits of earth and mud rained down from above and his ears were a cacophony of ringing. The Arbiter tried pushing himself to his feet but his left leg collapsed under him, a small circle of metal embedded in the flesh of his calf. It took him a moment to realise it was one of the buttons from his coat. He pushed himself to his feet again, this time putting most of his weight on his right leg and looked around for the Inquisitor.

  Where he had run from was a giant, burning crater in the earth, bright from the flames. Not ten paces from the crater Thanquil saw the Inquisitor. She was limping towards him with eyes full of fury. The left side of her face was blackened and bloody, her hair was all but gone; burned away by the explosion. Her left ear was missing; nothing more than a bloody, burnt stump of flesh. Blood ran down her left arm and dripped onto the earth, soaking into the soil. She may have been caught in the blast but Thanquil could tell she was far from finished and the look in her eyes told him she was done playing with him.

  Thanquil raised his sword, ready to fight. The blade was spotted black from where the fire had engulfed it and it looked near as battered as he did. His left leg still couldn't support his weight but he couldn't risk ripping the button out.

  The Inquisitor's first attack seemed to jar Thanquil down to his very bones and he fought to stay upright while blocking the next strike. Left to right, right to left and over again. With every swing of the sword the Inquisitor seemed to be getting stronger despite her left arm hanging limp by her side. Thanquil stepped backwards onto his bad leg and screamed in pain just the Inquisitor's sword shattered his own.

  He hit the ground, dropped the useless shard of metal that had been his sword and started scrambling backwards, still cradling his right arm against his chest. Inquisitor Heron advanced on him, her once beautiful face a charred, bloody ruin but there was no pain in her eyes, only anger.

  “It's over, Arbiter Darkheart,” she slurred, the burnt side of her mouth twisting into a grimace.

  Thanquil had no choice; he snapped the chip of wood he kept hidden, sown into his trousers. The same rune he had stolen from the God-Emperor of Sarth half a year ago. It was as likely to kill him as it was to kill her but at least neither of them would die alone. He could already feel the power building around him. Arbiter Darkheart looked up at Inquisitor Heron and smiled.

  “Mine is the Judgement of the Righteous, Inquisitor.”

  Thanquil was rewarded with her eyes going wide with fear just as the sky opened up and the light of judgement bathed him and everything around him in its cleansing fire.

  The light was so bright it blinded Thanquil even with his eyes closed. The fire so hot he could feel his flesh searing, burning, melting from his bones. Three voices screamed in pain out into the light; his, hers and another, a voice with no traces of humanity. Thanquil could no longer tell if he was standing or lying down, up and down no longer mattered, all there was light and fire and pain as the Judgement of the Righteous burned away all the sins, all
the heresy from his soul.

  Then it was over. The light was gone, the fire was gone but the pain remained, his flesh was still burning. Thanquil pried his eyes open and let the bright spots of colour clear. He was kneeling on the earth, his arms hanging limp by his sides, and his head slumped down against his chest. He could see the skin on his arms, his right hand was still a blackened, bloody mess but his left was fine, it wasn't burnt at all despite the feeling still coursing through his flesh.

  He was so tired he couldn't move. Truth was Thanquil was certain he'd have passed out if it hadn't been for the sleepless charm still sealed to his left arm. He was so tired he couldn't even take pleasure in his survival. Part of him wanted to giggle, part of him wanted to cry, all of him wanted to sleep.

  Someone laughed. A woman's voice, hoarse and raw and cackling, a horrible sound that sent a wave of despair through Thanquil. She shouldn't have been able to survive. He picked his head off his chest. Not two metres away Inquisitor Heron knelt opposite him, her entire left side still a bloody, burnt mess. Her right arm raised into the sky, her sword held above her, black and smoking. She threw her head back and laughed into the night sky.

  “The sword...” she laughed. “MY sword!”

  The merchant had said accurate up to ten paces, Thanquil remembered. “How about point blank?” he asked of no one just as Inquisitor Heron's head rolled forward to look at him.

  BANG!

  Thanquil never saw the result of the shot. He saw Inquisitor Heron fall backwards, or maybe it was just him falling backwards. He knew he hit the floor and he knew he couldn't summon the energy to move anymore and he knew he should be unconscious but instead he just lay there, eyes closed, his mind awake but not aware.

  At some point he heard voices. He wasn't sure when, it might have been a few minutes, a few hours, days... He knew there were a lot of them, some hurried, frantic, others slow and thoughtful. One sounded like it might belong to the Grand Inquisitor but he couldn't be certain.

  “What do we do with him?” a voice asked close by.

  “Is he still alive?”

  “I think so... yes.”

  “Finish him off. It's what she'd have wanted.”

  “No.”

  “Sir?”

  “Take him back to the Inquisition, to the infirmary. He will be tried for his crimes.”

  “Sir.”

  Thanquil thought he felt arms on him. He had the strange sense of moving, or being dragged or carried but his mind refused to process any of it.

  “There's something on his arm.”

  “What?”

  “I don't know. I'm not one of them.”

  “Take it off.”

  “But what if it...”

  The Arbiter

  Four guards they had to escort him from his cell to the council chambers. It would have seemed excessive even had Thanquil been uninjured, unfettered and armed. As it was he had no doubt a single novice could take him down right now. Still, he supposed it helped them all to feel safer.

  He shuffled along, little more than a crawl with his hands and feet chained together giving him a permanent stoop while standing. The guards around him were silent and unyielding, setting a slow pace, any faster and they'd have had to carry Thanquil to the council chambers.

  At least they were doing it discretely. They could just have paraded him across the Inquisition compound for all to see. He had no doubt every Arbiter in Sarth would have come to see the traitor.

  Four days they told him, four days he'd been unconscious. The medic; a grumpy old Arbiter with too much skin to his face and a permanent scowl, told Thanquil he was starting to doubt if he'd ever wake up. That hadn't stopped them chaining him to the bed though. The old man had done his best to heal Thanquil's arm but confided there was only so much could be done with a burn like that.

  “It'll heal, most likely, given time. Assuming you have any. Doubt you'll ever have full movement again though. Burns tend to scar,” the old Arbiter had croaked at him.

  His right arm was swathed with bandages up to the elbow and the bandages had been soaked in some sort of oil that made them feel greasy to the touch. Still the hand hurt like every type of hell and Thanquil could feel the skin red and raw underneath whenever he tried to move a finger. It also didn't help that the guards had insisted on chaining both his hands despite the injury. The metal cuff rubbed against his wrist setting it on fire all over again. The guards would hear none of it though so he suffered in silence.

  Thanquil thought of Jezzet and Thorn, mainly of Jezzet. No one had brought him any news on the status of Kessick or Kosh so he had no idea whether the others had succeeded with their targets, no idea whether the others had even survived so he chose to believe they had. They would have met at the inn after the job was done, waited for Thanquil for a couple of days, realised he wasn't coming and then they would have fled. Thorn would no doubt run back to the untamed wilds and Jezzet... Jezzet would go with him. If they were lucky they would already be on a ship sailing back to Chade. At least they wouldn't have to share in Thanquil's execution.

  The walk seemed longer than it had every time before. It might have been because of the crawling pace or maybe because of the dread anticipation, Thanquil couldn't tell. When the doors to the council chambers loomed up in front of him, coming out of the darkness like the gates to hell, he stumbled and very nearly fell; he would have if it weren't for one of the guards behind him catching his arm and helping him upright. Thanquil turned to thank the Arbiter but the look on the man's face convinced him not to, there was hatred there and he had little doubt as to why. Inquisitor Heron had been well loved among the Inquisition and Thanquil had left her an almost unidentifiable corpse. The fact that she was the heretic who was trying to bring down the entire Inquisition was not yet widely accepted, except by Thanquil himself.

  Two more Arbiters stood guard this side of the door. They watched the prisoner and his escort with cold, hard eyes. Seems they were taking no chances of Thanquil escaping, no doubt there would be more guards inside the chambers along with the remaining eleven Inquisitors. Rarely had anyone ever commanded such a powerful audience.

  The doors opened with an ominous boom and the two guards stood aside to let Thanquil and his escort through. Both men were armed with short swords on their hips and both men kept their hands on the hilts as he shuffled past.

  “Do I really look so dangerous?” Thanquil said. He rattled his chains for effect and winced as fresh searing pain shot through his burned arm.

  One of the guards, the taller one with a split lip, grinned at him. “Inside, heretic. Your judgement awaits.”

  Thanquil thought of a reply but decided instead to keep silent. No sense in making matters any worse, not that he was sure they could get any worse. Inside the council chambers all was still and silent. None of the Inquisitors had gathered yet, no doubt they would make him wait a while.

  “Any chance I could get these chains off?” Thanquil asked his guard as they stopped him in the centre of the chamber.

  “Sorry, Thanquil,” the flat-nosed guard said with a shake of his head.

  “Don't talk to him, Gull. He's a Darkheart!”

  Thanquil chuckled. “Don't worry, it's not contagious.”

  The guard who had warned Gull looked about ready to backhand Thanquil but the side door opened and the Inquisitors started to file in. Eleven of them where there should have been twelve. Grand Inquisitor Vance strode in at the head of the column, his face was as hard and stern as always, even rock would yield before the Grand Inquisitor's stare. Then came Inquisitor Downe, the last woman on the council for now, her face was flat and her eyes beady. Inquisitors Vert, Khanos and Westrus entered, conversing with each other in quiet voices, none of the three even glanced towards Thanquil. Inquisitors Dale, Jeyne, Fel'en and Aurelus took a different approach and each stared at him like staring was going out of fashion. Last came Inquisitors Ellswin and Markus, they both glanced at Thanquil and dismissed his presence as if the
whole reason they were there was not to pass judgement on him. After all eleven Inquisitors had entered another man stepped through the door. Arbiter Hironous Vance seemed to glide through the portal, closing the door afterwards. He stopped behind the twelfth chair, not sitting in it but standing, waiting. He looked like a younger, softer version of his father, with a round face where the Grand Inquisitor's was all hard angles. It might have seemed strange once for an Arbiter to be included in this gathering but Thanquil had no doubt Arbiter Hironous Vance would soon be Inquisitor Hironous Vance.

  There was a heavy silence once all the Inquisitors had been seated. It was almost as if none of them wanted to be the first to speak so they just stared at Thanquil, judging him with silent eyes. The way the lanterns in the room were angled meant Thanquil could barely see his betters but they could see him clear as day.

  He rattled his chains a little. “Could I get these taken off? They've been chafing the burn a bit.” Silence. “You can't be scared of me, not all eleven of you.” Thanquil bit his tongue to stop himself from saying more. Every time in this room he had to find some way to mock those sat in judgement of him.

  “Take them off, Arbiter Gull,” boomed the Grand Inquisitor's voice.

  A few moments later and he was free. Thanquil stretched out his shoulders and marvelled at the stiffness he felt. He looked down at his right hand; blood was showing through the bandage where the cuffs had been. The old Arbiter in charge of the infirmary was not going to be pleased... assuming Thanquil walked out of this chamber alive.

  “Only six months since you were last in front of us, Thanquil Darkheart.” The voice was heavy and brutish, Inquisitor Aurelus. The fact that he missed off the title of Arbiter was not a good sign.