by Mike Shel
With that, Auric reached for the great brass handle on the left door. When it wouldn’t budge, he tried the right, but it was also locked. “I don’t think these doors have been barred since the Sons and Daughters of Hell tried to depose the queen.”
“During the Plumstone Rebellion? Fifty-two years ago.”
“Belech! You know your history.”
“I can name every monarch back to King Coryth the Revelator himself,” Belech boasted. “You know how many bar bets I’ve won with that? It’s not all chopping wood and hauling sacks of potatoes. Lady Hannah has an extensive library.”
Auric took a ring clutched in the mouth of an iron gorgon’s head mounted on the left door and brought it down hard three times. There came an ominous echo from within, as though the space beyond was vacant. Just as Auric reached again for the knocker, sounds of locks being undone came from inside. The door opened slowly, just wide enough for a young, haggard-looking priest of Belu to poke his head out, dark circles under his eyes
“Plague, like the rat banner says,” said the weary man, his pale blue cap cock-eyed. “Go to the Blue Cathedral and burn a candle for the afflicted.”
Auric stuck a foot in the door as the cleric made to close it and held up the letter with its telltale seal. “My name is Auric Manteo. This is my companion Belech Potts. We come at the request of Third Lictor Pallas Rae and have already met with the archbishop.” Belech held up the gift Hanadis had given him as though it was a holy talisman.
The man looked at them, uncomprehending for a moment. Then he scratched his unshaven chin and opened the door wide enough to admit the visitors, taking Auric’s letter at the same time.
The broad hall was lit by torches. Normally the shutters high on the walls were opened in the mornings to allow in natural light, but all were closed fast—another first in Auric’s estimation. There was an unpleasant, stale warmth in the now-empty corridor. The priest re-locked the door, then turned back to the two men and looked at them blankly, as though he had forgotten their purpose. “Pallas Rae,” said Auric with brittle patience. The priest gave an absent nod and turned away, walking down the hall with an exaggerated limp.
I don’t understand these priests, he thought. Devoted to the goddess of healing, yet half deny themselves the bounty of their patron. To what end?
Belech seemed mesmerized by the frescoes lining the walls of the great hall, portraits of Syraeic League luminaries from the guild’s long, storied history. Though the hand that wielded the brush varied across the centuries, all the depictions were realistically rendered, some featuring a single stalwart, some in pairs, and many in groups of three or more. It was obvious he would have liked to examine the paintings at length, but Auric didn’t indulge him. He himself had seen the portraits a thousand times, and his heart ached at the thought of Agnes. But as the trio neared the end of the curving corridor, Belech’s comment brought him up short.
“Belu’s grace, this lot seems to have pissed someone off.”
Auric stopped to face the object of the old soldier’s observation. The fresco depicted five Syraeic agents, but the faces of two had been chipped from the wall and the eyes of a third were marred, as though gouged out with a dagger. The right-hand side of the painting had a large section torn away entirely. Ragged crosses were carved over the hearts of the two remaining figures.
“How recent is this damage?” asked Auric of the weary priest, wondering if a vandal had somehow gained entry to the Citadel or if this disfigurement signified something more portentous.
“I’m here to comfort the sick, sir,” the man said, folding his arms across his chest. “Before this month I’d never been at the Citadel. You can ask the lictor when you see her, though I think she’s had more important matters to concern her than scratched frescoes.”
The cleric resumed leading them to Lictor Rae, Auric and Belech both sparing glances back at the mutilated mural as they followed the fatigued priest through a broad door, followed by a series of rooms lined with cots. Each cot was occupied by a woman or man clad in gray bedclothes, laurel leaves of the goddess draped at their feet. Some were fevered and delirious, and overmatched priests and acolytes flitted between them, doing their best with cool rags and water flasks to ease their suffering. Others struck with the illness lay motionless in their sickbeds. One would think them dead save for the shallow, almost imperceptible rise and fall of their chests. Auric scanned the cots for Agnes, but her face was not among them.
At last they passed through a courtyard and into a small room lined with shelves holding earthen tableware. Sitting at a dark wood table was an elderly woman. Her long white hair was pulled back and held in a series of brass loops, revealing a high forehead. She wore an embroidered patch of velvet over her left eye, a livid vertical scar showing above and below the cloth. Her nose was upturned, her mouth set in a frown as she stooped over a scroll held in a slightly trembling hand. She took no notice of the three men when they entered her makeshift study, looking up only after the priest cleared his throat and held out the seal-marked letter with a wilted gesture. She glanced at Auric and Belech, then dismissed the cleric with a wave of her hand.
“Auric Manteo, I trust?” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “You and I have much to speak of.”
Word had been sent from the Blue Cathedral of Auric’s arrival last night and Pallas Rae wasted no time with pleasantries. She announced that Agnes’s condition was unchanged, and she was being cared for night and day in a private room by a gentle and devoted acolyte of Belu who never left her side. She would take Auric to see his daughter when he was fully informed of the circumstances.
“It’s been nearly two months since this nightmare began,” she in her hushed, despairing voice, filling a ceramic cup with juice from a decanter. “A novice named Jalla was dusting displays in the Hall of Glories—as you know, Auric, a common enough task for young initiates. You are familiar with the Besh relic?”
“I think so,” he answered hesitantly. “A misshapen gem about the size of an apple?”
“A bit larger than that,” she answered. “And oval. Its price was quite steep. It was retrieved from a sunken Djao temple in the Barrowlands over thirty years ago. The expedition cost us an entire team. Three were killed in the temple itself, one permanently incapacitated. The two others left our ranks afterward and dropped out of sight.”
“I think I recall hearing the tale. It would have been before my time with the League, of course. The relic was the only item retrieved from the temple?”
“Yes,” Rae continued. “Our scholars spent hundreds of hours examining it without ever being able to make head nor tail of the ugly thing. All they gleaned was that it emanated powerful necromantic magic. After three years they surrendered to its obstinacy and placed the relic in its own case in the Hall of Glories. The Djao site it was retrieved from at such great cost sits beneath an ecumenical order’s abbey, the White Priory of St. Besh, hence the relic’s name. Every year since that first expedition we send a request to the priory to re-enter the Djao temple beneath it, thinking answers lie within. Each year the prior sends us back the same three-word reply: ‘It is forbidden.’ We’ve gone so far as to petition the Crown to override the priory’s jurisdiction on three occasions, but you know how touchy the cults are about their ancient prerogatives. Her Majesty—long may she reign—has denied our requests, with much encouragement from the priestly castes at court, of course.”
Rae stopped to take a long drink of juice, some dribbling out the corner of her wrinkled mouth. She wiped it from her face and returned the cup to the table.
“That novice, Jalla. As near as we can tell, he removed the relic from its case, only the gods know why. He managed to cut himself on the gem’s only sharp edge. We found the foolish lad dead, his body obscenely swollen and hot to the touch. The cut to his finger was deep, but he certainly didn’t die from blood loss. In fact, we found no blood on the r
elic at all. The two fellow novices who discovered his body were dead themselves within three hours, as was the lictor they ran to: Ozrin. I’m sorry, I think you knew him well.”
Auric nodded, stunned. Ozrin was his prime preceptor with the League when he was first accepted into his novitiate at the Citadel. He didn’t know he had risen to the rank of lictor; hadn’t thought of the clever man in years. He pushed his melancholy aside and allowed Rae to resume her narrative.
“Well, Lictor Melic was away at the time, so that left me senior officer at the Citadel. I took over the investigation, but was struck down myself by the plague within a day. Why I wasn’t carried off by this pestilence is another mystery. I’m seventy-two years old, my hands tremble, and I’m given to an unholy host of ailments. Belu’s mercy, her priests are here to heal me of one malady or another every other week. But somehow I survived, while much younger and stronger agents have taken up residence in our cemetery or the vaults below. While I was incapacitated, your daughter—may all good gods bless her—took it upon herself to direct the construction of a vessel to contain the relic. Some of our scholars decided it wasn’t necessarily contact with the relic that caused the affliction. In fact, some who had touched it never contracted the illness, but all who became ill had been in proximity to the artifact. The relic itself was somehow…selecting its victims. We’re calling the vessel containing it the Golden Egg. Never mind that it’s made of brass. At any rate, the Egg is ensorcelled with a web of divine rituals for constraining evil, and some necromantic spells that hinder magical vision.”
“You blinded it?” marveled Auric.
“In a sense, yes,” she responded with a small smile, pleased by the notion. “But this is only a stopgap measure, Sir Auric. Our scholars don’t think the Egg can hold the relic’s malevolence forever. A more permanent solution must be reached.” She stopped, looking down at a tattered scroll on the table before her, as though the courage to speak lay in its words.
“We had to inform the Queen’s Court of the epidemic in our halls, Sir Auric. We spoke with the Grand Chamberlain through his Sorcerers’ Council, the College of Divinity consulted on the matter, and all agree.” Again, Pallas Rae was silent. She shuffled some of her papers, an act that only exaggerated the tremors in her hands.
Auric looked at her, a knot tightening in his gut. “What? What must be done?”
“We must return it. The relic must be sent back to its home in the Barrowlands.”
5
For Agnes
Agnes Manteo was in a small private cubicle near one of the Citadel’s cavernous libraries. Dark crescents lay beneath her eyelids, her complexion deathly pale, and beads of sweat dotted her brow. The acolyte who cared for her, whose name Auric had missed when the lad introduced himself, had propped her up with pillows. He burned fragrant incense in a small brazier at her bedside table and dabbed her forehead with a damp cloth as he spoke, both his movements and voice gentle and soothing.
“Two of my sisters bathed her yesterday and we give her broth twice a day, Sir Auric. She’s never left unattended, but she hasn’t stirred. She’s been like this for fifteen days now. I perform the ritual of healing and peace three times a day and pray for her without ceasing.”
The blind could see the young man’s regard for Agnes went beyond vocational devotion. Even in this weakened state, she looked so much like brown-haired Marta at her age, save for the aquiline nose she had inherited from Auric and the dusting of freckles on her cheeks that had been her companions since childhood. Auric found himself watching her chest rise and fall with impossibly slow, shallow breaths for a long while, fearing each she drew would be her last.
“Raimund here has rarely left this room, Sir Auric,” said Rae, unobtrusive at the cubicle door. “She receives the best care we can provide, but there’s nothing more that can be done here. Her cure lies elsewhere.”
Raimund, he thought. The boy’s name is Raimund. He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. It was Belech, offering awkward comfort.
“Elsewhere,” Auric echoed. “And you wish me to be a part of this expedition into the Barrowlands.”
“Yes. To lead it.”
“I left the League three years ago, Lictor Rae. And I did not act on impulse.”
“Aye, but this plague has thinned our ranks greatly. Nearly all agents in residence at the Citadel occupy either a cot, a funerary urn or a grave. I sent out an order of recall to those in the field. Only three have reached us, and none with your experience in the Barrowlands. I need someone who has skill, wisdom, and a history in the kind of place to which you’ll be headed.”
“History,” Auric repeated, still watching Agnes’s shallow breathing. “An interesting word to choose.”
“And chosen carefully,” Rae responded. “I spoke with Agnes about seeking your aid before she fell into this coma. She said you felt the loss of Lenda and the rest deeply, and that it had left a wound in you that festered.”
“I’ve lost many comrades during my service to the League, Lictor, as we all have,” he said in an empty tone, knowing even as he spoke that his daughter’s assessment was true.
“She believed that your final expedition…broke you. Agnes feels your residency in Daurhim is submission to that brokenness. I do not say these things to cause injury, brother.”
Auric took in a deep breath, as though he could fill up Agnes’s lungs himself. His mind flashed to images from his tenacious nightmare: the corpses, the pit, Lenda’s raggedly severed head gaping at him in accusation. He rested a shaking hand on the pommel of his sword to steady it. “My hand shakes. Did you notice? I woke from a nightmare this morning beneath my bed at the cathedral, Lictor Rae. Friend Belech here hauled me out, swinging and screaming as though I thought myself back in that pit with the hungry dead. Yesterday, I blacked out at the sight of blood. Do any of these things recommend me for your mission?”
Rae, diminutive and bent over as she stood from the table, walked over to him with halting steps and put a gnarled hand on each of his shoulders. Brow knitted, she stared into his eyes. “I loathe manipulation, Sir Auric. I am sick to death of the pretense and diplomacy we must practice outside these walls to accomplish our goals. Let me speak to you now without fancy palaver, as Syraeic sister to Syraeic brother: there is no one else. We need you now, desperately. Agnes needs you, desperately. Whatever your reasons for leaving us, they must be set aside. Whatever afflictions you suffer, they must be borne. We need you now and no other man or woman can fill the role. Now.”
Auric returned her intense gaze, bore witness to the pleading urgency in her eyes. He took in a few long breaths, felt Belech’s eyes on him as well, and those of the lad, Raimund, kneading the damp cloth in his hands. Rae let her hands drop from his shoulders and took a few steps back. He had to make a decision, if he could even call it that. He stood from Agnes’s bedside.
“Return the relic to its home? Another first. The Syraeic League giving something back. I’ll run this errand for you, Pallas Rae. Let me meet these three intrepid souls who wish to accompany a man with graying hair and shaking hand to the Barrowlands.”
Belech insisted on accompanying Auric and the lictor to the courtyard where Rae had assembled the field agents who would head north with Auric. Two women, one man, none past twenty-five. Auric sighed, reminding himself that if they had started young and completed their training on schedule, each could have six or more years of useful experience under their belts. They weren’t children, for Belu’s sake.
The alchemist was named Lumari. She was a pale woman with severe features, her light blond hair pulled back into a tight bun. She was outfitted like every alchemist Auric had ever known: a forest of satchels, bags, and flasks hung on leather straps around her neck, or attached to her belt. She also wore two bandoliers draped about her torso and shoulders holding thin vials of liquids and powders of every description. Her face was almost expressionless, until you met h
er pale gray eyes. They darted about, curious and penetrating, hungrily soaking up the information they gathered. While the others were introduced, she tapped two empty glass tubes together in what Auric assumed was a nervous tic.
The sorcerer called herself Del Ogara. Her black hair was cropped short—with a pair of very dull shears, by the looks of it—her skin olive in tone and pockmarked beneath big, dark eyes. A dramatic tattoo of black and deep reds covered her face from the lower lip down, so intricate its design that from a distance it appeared solid black. Its strange twists and angles descended to her neck and vanished beneath a light burgundy blouse. Her layered skirts were creamy and diaphanous and she wore a different jeweled ring on each of her nine fingers, the pinky on her left hand conspicuous by its absence. Set in the center of her forehead was a black opal, embedded there by occult ritual as a mark of training and conditioning at the Royal College of Sorcerers: the binding jewel. At first Auric thought her grim and humorless, but this was an illusion created by her body art: she smiled broadly when their third companion spoke something in her ear, as though the two shared a conspiracy. It lit up the courtyard like sunshine.
That third companion was a tall and striking young man with dark blond hair that flowed past his shoulders. He was a swordsman named Gnaeus Valesen and he dressed like many of the fashionable rakes who prowled taverns, gambling houses and brothels in Boudun, or any other city across the empire for that matter. He wore a bandolier of wickedly sharp knives and a sheathed rapier at his side, its silver guard of exquisite craftsmanship that likely cost enough to feed a family of four in Daurhim for six months. His shirt of white silk, dark leather pants, and doeskin boots were of the finest quality, and his winning smile was in steep competition with that of the sorcerer, Del. An impulse to punch the man in the face struck Auric, and he felt certain he wasn’t the first to experience that particular urge.