by Vox Day
A Throne of Bones by Vox Day
Published by Marcher Lord Hinterlands
A division of Marcher Lord Press
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Colorado Springs, CO 80920
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright (c) 2012 by Vox Day
All rights reserved
Cover Designer: Kirk DouPonce
Map Designer: James Simonsen
Editor and Typesetter: Jeff Gerke
eBook Conversion and Design: Kerry Nietz
International Standard Book Number: 978-1-935929-88-8
To Spacebunny
Whom I love truly, madly, and deeply.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Jeff, for his courageous vision and baseless confidence. 494 days of madness! Jamsco, for his keen and Christian eye. JartStar, for his excellent map and his encouragement. Markku, for his inimitable attention to detail. The kids, for their patience and understanding when Daddy is writing. And no, you can’t read it, not yet. Kirk DouPonce, for yet another spectacular cover. The Dread Ilk of Vox Popoli, for their enthusiasm. And my mentor, the Original Cyberpunk, for finally convincing me to focus on the story, not the subtext.
Ecclesiastes 9:9
PROLOGUE
“Who are you?”
Ahenobarbus stared at the faded painting in the gilded frame mounted on the wall in front of him. The flickering candles cast an eerie glow upon the scene: Six armed men stood over the fallen body of a seventh man, from whose face Ahenobarbus, or as others reverently called him, His Sanctified Holiness Charity IV, couldn’t take his eyes. The victim was nude, and though there were six assassins in the painting, the body bore seven wounds. Someone had struck twice.
“Why did they kill you?”
The painting was entitled Decessus Inmortuus, “The Death of the Undying.” It had once been considered a masterpiece. But now it was here, deep underground in the storage vaults. Quintus stood in an insignificant room occasionally used for receptions by minor functionaries deep in the bowels of the sanctal palace. The painting had recently been moved here from the storage areas, but this wasn’t exactly an honored location.
The bright colors and the flat, unnatural perspective were typical of the artist: Mariattus, the great Nardine. Only the face of the stabbed man was facing toward the viewer. The six assassins were all in profile. It was almost as if Mariattus had intended to draw particular attention to the face.
Ahenobarbus reached out an arthritic finger and lightly traced the outline of the fallen man’s jaw. “And how can it be that you are not dead?”
There was a soft, respectful knock on the door behind him.
“Enter.”
Through the door came Giovannus Falconius Valens. Even dressed as a simple monk, as he was now, Valens could never be mistaken for anything but a noble prince of the Church. He was a tall, handsome man with a demeanor that most perceived as arrogant, though as his sometime confessor, Ahenobarbus knew better. But Valens was the very man whom Ahenobarbus required now.
“Holiness.” Valens kneeled and kissed Quintus’s sacred ring of office. “How may I be of service to you in this…unusual setting? I was surprised when Father Hortensius said you wanted me in the vaults. I half expected to find you knee deep in dust and relics. Are you well? I saw Gennarus Vestinae led the evening mass.”
“I am as well as any man with twelve years more than his allotted four score and ten may hope to be, my son.” Ahenobarbus led him to the painting. “What I require of you at the present is your eyes. I suspect they are keener than my own. This picture here. When you look at the man who has been struck down by the others, what do you see?”
Valens frowned, and his eyebrows momentarily rose. No doubt he found the request puzzling. But the obedient habits of a lifetime reasserted themselves, and he turned his attention toward the painting. For a moment, there was silence, and then it was broken by a sudden intake of breath.
“By the Virgin!” he exclaimed softly.
“So, you see it too,” Quintus said. It was not a question.
“I do, Holiness.”
“And what do you make of the resemblance to Laris Sebastius?”
“I…I could not say. A coincidence, mayhap? Perhaps even a descendant?” Valens took a candle and used it to peer more closely at the victim’s face. “The likeness is uncanny, especially when the limitations of Mariattus’s primitive technique are taken into account.”
Ahenobarbus smiled. “Of course you would recognize the brush. How does a poor monk come to know so much of art and culture?”
Valens shrugged slightly. “I fancy myself an ascetic aesthete, Your Holiness.”
“Have you seen this painting before?”
“I have not previously had the privilege,” Valens said. “The style and theme is readily apparent, of course, as Pisanus describes it in his catalogue of the ancients. It could not be anyone but Mariattus. That peculiar shade of orange—you see it there—he habitually used it in the place of yellow, and it is unmistakable.”
Valens set the candle down. “If I may hazard a guess, I should venture to say this is Excessum Inmortuus. No, I fear my memory fails me. Decessus Inmortuus. Painted sometime around the year 185 Provitiatus for a noble of the Severan house. It came into the possession of the Church after the fall of Andronis and the establishment of the Republic. I did not know it had been removed from the vaults. Had I known, I would have come to see it sooner. It is a joy to behold.”
“You have a prodigious talent, my son.”
“Mariattus had a prodigious talent. I am merely blessed to appreciate his skill.”
“Even so.”
“We are but as the Immaculate has made us, Holiness.”
“Aptly put. And yet, if this is not a coincidence, if this is not a trick of the familial bloodlines, then we must ask what this is that the Immaculate has made here? Long life is not sinful in itself, of course. Indeed, there are elves who were old when this was first painted. But this is no elf. Can it be there are truly men still living among us who live five hundred years or more?”
“I should not have imagined so, Holiness. And yet, we know from the Inviolate Word that the First Men were said to live as many as two thousand years. It has always been assumed that the great decline in the lifespan of Man was a result of the departure of the Lesser Gods from Tellus Demittus, but the proposed connection between the two events has never been more than circumstantial. Oxonus emphasized that the Inviolate itself is mute on the matter.”
“It is conceivable, then. Difficult to credit, unlikely, and yet conceivable even so.” Ahenobarbus turned his eyes back to the painting and the disturbingly familiar face of the fallen man. “We must know more of this, Valens, and we must know it soon. Preparations for the investitures have already begun, but we cannot permit them to proceed when we
are not even sure we are dealing with a mortal man or not. To welcome our elder brothers within the bosom of Holy Mother Church was one thing, but to permit one who may be unsouled to advance higher in the hierarchy would be unthinkable!”
“Without doubt, Holiness. But the candidates will not begin their fasts for another three days. The ceremony could be postponed.”
“If necessary, we shall do so. Speak to no one of this. Tomorrow we shall order an inquisition into each of the candidates. That should suffice to allay any suspicions that our attention has been drawn to a particular individual. You will be assigned to the candidate of interest. The inquisition will spark a few rumors, which is to be regretted. But even that may prove beneficial. Even the most outlandish whispers will appear far more credible than our true concern.”
Valens bowed deeply. “You honor me with your confidence, Sanctified Father. If there is aught amiss, rest assured I shall uncover it.”
“Three days, Valens. We must take a decision in three days. In the meantime, we shall arrange for a reasonable excuse for delay, in the event one is required.”
“A propitious timeframe, Holiness.” Valens smiled faintly. “The Immaculate shattered the Gates of Hell in three days. I shall pray that the secrets of the Inmortuus will reveal themselves with similar alacrity.”
“We shall do likewise, my son.” Quintus extended his hand.
Valens knelt again to kiss it. “Your blessing, Holiness?”
“Beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam.” Quintus lightly sketched three lines on the younger man’s forehead, and his finger left a trail of white light glowing briefly behind where it had touched. “In hoc signo vinces, in nomine Puri, in nomine Immaculati, in nomine Domini.”
Valens, his eyes closed, waited until the light faded from his skin. Then he rose gracefully from his knees, bowed again, turned, and walked quickly out of the room. He closed the door silently behind him.
Ahenobarbus, who very rarely felt either sanctified or holy, picked up the candle Valens had used, and he held it closer to the painting, peering closely at the rough texture of the brushwork. He had heard that artists often incorporated hidden meanings into their works. Was there any significance to the seven wounds or the six killers? To the fact that only one face could be seen? And then there was the title of the work—“Death of the Undying”—was that not a sign of some import? There were so many questions.
He wondered what would happen if he ordered the palace guards to bring the bishop concerned down to this room to confront his painted doppelganger from the distant past. A crude stratagem, perhaps even a dangerous one, but it might be that a direct approach would be the simplest path to the answers required.
No. There was always time for that later if more subtle means of inquiry failed.
He looked at the painting one last time. It occurred to him that if Valens could learn who the six were, or who or what they were supposed to represent, that might eventually lead him to their victim, be he dead or alive these five centuries past. He reminded himself to tell Valens that on the morrow.
“Who are you?” he asked the man in the painting again. “And if indeed they killed you, did you remain in the grave?”
Priests, bishops, and even princes of the Church hastened to get out of Valens’s way as he followed the cerulengus hurrying through the palace in his full episcopal vestments. Valens himself was followed by no fewer than twenty-one Sanctal guards, each ceremonially clad in gleaming white-lacquered armor and red cloaks. Cries of astonishment and alarm trailed in their wake, but the elderly cerulengus did not so much as slow his stride for any man, regardless of his rank.
Valens heard the whispers as they passed.
“What is happening?” he heard a grey-haired archbishop whisper to a Jamite priest as he walked past them. “Has someone been arrested?”
The little priest was shaking his head, his eyes wide with astonishment. But Valens couldn’t tell if the priest’s look was from ignorance, from the sight of armed men marching through it with grim purpose, or simply from the fact that the Archbishop of Lanobus had deigned to speak to him.
They approached the bedchamber suite that belonged to His Holiness. Both sets of doors were open, so the cerulengus entered the bedchamber without knocking, as did Valens. The remainder of his entourage took up positions outside the doors, in case anyone thought to disturb this most holy of tasks.
The Sanctified Father was lying on his bed, still wearing his nightrobe, with the rich velvet covers of his bedding drawn up to his chest. He was being attended by two Ospedalers. The older monk was the first to notice their entry and quickly dropped to one knee. His companion quickly followed suit. Four princes of the Church watched over the Ospedalers, one positioned at each of the bed’s four corners. Valens took note of them—Baccius Antonius, Paulus Masella, Ildebrando Ortognan, and Mamercus Severus Furius—as the cerulengus turned his attention to the Ospedaler who was the senior medicus.
“You have listened?”
“Yes, Eminence. His heart is still.”
“You have attempted the mirror?”
“Yes, Eminence. His breath is still.”
“You have seen no sign of anything untoward?”
“No, Eminence. His flesh is unmarred. His scent is clean.” The cerulengus nodded, and when he did not ask another question, the two Ospedalers filed solemnly from the bedchamber to join the soldiers and the growing body of ecclesiasticals standing just outside the second set of doors.
Valens watched, bearing witness on behalf of the Sacred College, as the cerulengus approached the motionless figure of His Holiness, leaned over him, and withdrew a small iron hammer from the dark blue leather bag tied to the sash around his waist. It was engraved with the insignia of House Flavius, a bear and a wolf rampant. The cerulengus reached out, placed it over the Sanctiff’s forehead, and gently tapped the hammer against the white skin stretched out like a papyrus over the elderly man’s skull.
“Quintus Flavius Ahenobarbus,” he whispered softly. There was a hush in the room. No one moved. No one breathed, least of all His Sanctified Holiness Charity IV. The cerulengus tapped again with the hammer. “Quintus Flavius Ahenobarbus,” the cerulengus repeated, a little more loudly this time. Again, there was silence in the room. Again, the Sanctiff failed to respond.
The third time, the cerulengus barely touched the iron to the Sanctiff’s forehead. “Quintus Flavius Ahenobarbus,” he called in a commanding voice. Even so, no answer was forthcoming. The elderly celestine slipped the hammer back into its bag, placed his right hand upon the Sanctiff’s chest, and took the man’s right hand in his left.
“In paradisum deducant te Angeli. In tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam. Chorus Angelorum te suscipiat, et aeternam habeas requiem.”
Valens gritted his teeth as the cerulengus removed the sanctal ring from the lifeless hand and turned toward him and Masella. He could feel a burning pressure behind his eyes, but he was determined not to weep for the Sanctified Father, not yet.
He looked away and saw that, outside the suite, several of the soldiers were weeping in silence, tears streaking down their faces and spilling onto their white breastplates. Others wore faces of stone, clenching their jaws and looking off into distant horizons as the cerulengus cleared his throat and pronounced the ritual words that forty-three of his predecessors had spoken before him.
“The Sanctiff is dead! Let the penitentiaries be summoned. Let the Sacred College be convened. Let the world be told. The Most Holy and Sanctified Father has gone to the glory that is his certain and well-merited reward.”
CORVUS
Sextus Valerius Corvus stood on the crest of a small hill that commanded the surrounding terrain. He watched thousands of men under his command rapidly building the wooden equivalent of a small city on top of a slightly higher hill to the south. Four riders stood beside him, both as his messengers and his guards. He intended to keep the army here for at least three days, which
should give his outriders enough time to determine whether or not the Chalonu and Insobru tribes were coming to the aid of the goblin tribes with whom they’d already been skirmishing for weeks.
The men were getting the castra assembled quickly, he noticed with approval. The square shape of the defensive ditch was already discernible, and the first trees were being dragged from the nearby woods as the sound of axes beat a familiar rhythm. Then again, there were few things more motivating than the realization that twenty thousand shrieking goblins could fall upon your arse at any moment, without warning. Everyone slept better with the knowledge that there was a deep ditch and a tall wooden palisade standing between his tent and an enemy that would as soon rape you and eat you as kill you.
Corvus frowned as he saw a pair of riders exit the woods, galloping hard. They were scouts from the Second Knights, if he recalled the patrol schedule correctly. The two men were briefly stopped by the guards already stationed at what would soon be the Porta Principalis, then rode toward the command tent that had already been set up near the middle of the camp.
Corvus smiled grimly as they dismounted and began gesticulating at the guards standing outside it. Unless he missed his guess, the two scouts had finally located the army of the allied tribes he was seeking. With any luck, he would be able to bring them to battle soon, preferably on the morrow. If the goblin army had been found, the only real questions that remained were how many tribes comprised it and where he would meet them.
“Go to the camp and tell the legate and Tribune Valerius to come here at once,” he ordered one of his guards. “Armed and armored.”
“At once, General.” The knight saluted and started to mount his horse, then hesitated and turned back. “Ah, which Tribune Valerius do you want, General? Fortex or Clericus?”