“He murdered her and then disguised the body so that we would think it was him,” Sir Ander said grimly.
“He did not murder the girl, though one might say Elaina Devroux perished the day she fell victim to him and his cult,” said Father Jacob. “Note the expression on her face. The young woman died in a drug-induced state. The juice of the poppy, if I’m not mistaken. She dressed with care, even to binding her breasts to make herself appear flat-chested. She put on men’s boots, which are too big for her.”
He looked at the rigid, pale face with its strange and terrible smile. “The beard and mustache are made of real human hair and were applied by someone who knew his business. Such a disguise required careful planning and forethought. She must have agreed at the outset to sacrifice herself for the Warlock should that become necessary. The Warlock was her lover. She ran away from home, to go to him and to the opium he fed her.”
“How do you know she was taking opium?” Sir Ander asked.
“When her parents first found her, wandering aimlessly about the city, they thought her ravings were the result of ‘demonic possession.’ In truth, the seizures were brought about by the removal of the drug to which she had become addicted. I have seen the same behavior among patients in the infirmary who were given opium in honey for the pain of broken limbs. In some instances, when the opium is taken away, these patients appear to have been seized by demons.”
The priest drew back Elaina’s robes and pointed to two small marks on the young girl’s neck.
“That is how she died. When the Warlock placed the viper on her chest and covered it with her robes, she knew that it must eventually bite her.”
“But why would she do such thing?” Brother Barnaby asked, his voice soft with dismay.
“To give the man she adored the opportunity to escape, of course,” said Father Jacob. “He needed time to evade our pursuit and this poor child provided it.”
“He escapes, leaving her and everyone else in his cult to die. I hope he rots in Hell!” Sir Ander said savagely. “He was warned in advance of our coming.”
“Yes,” Father Jacob said and he added bitterly, in sudden anger, “As if we needed more proof than the fact that I walked into his trap and now eleven men are dead!”
“But who could have warned him? No one knew except you and me and the viscount . . .”
Sir Ander saw the grim look on the priest’s face. “The viscount? You can’t be serious! Why warn the very person he wanted us to catch? His soldiers were the ones who died in the assault.”
“I doubt that he meant to,” said Father Jacob. “We will probably find he has a servant in the pay of the Warlock.”
The priest rose to his feet and dusted off his hands. “We are not dealing with a lunatic, Sir Ander. We are dealing with a young man who is operating with a purpose, a young man with someone even more intelligent behind him.”
“You are talking about the Sorceress. But what purpose can there possibly be in torturing and murdering people? Other than”—Sir Ander glanced askance at Brother Barnaby and lowered his voice—“for sadistic sexual pleasure . . .”
“That is part of it, certainly,” said Father Jacob. He glanced about at the room, at the corpses in the alcoves. “But I believe it has more to do with the terror these gruesome crimes generate among the populace. Unlike most criminals, who seek to hide their crimes, this young man performs his openly. He wants people to know what he is doing. This entire part of the country has been in a state of panic for weeks, what with the discovery of mutilated bodies in farmers’ fields and a missing viscount’s daughter. All designed to awaken public interest and outrage and draw attention to the Warlock. Even my arrival feeds into this frenzy.”
“But why?” Sir Ander asked, bewildered. “To what end?”
“I very much fear, my friend, that the Warlock wants me to look at him because he does not want me looking at something else.”
Father Jacob stood for long moments lost in thought, then he roused himself.
“Well, we have done all we can here.” Father Jacob glanced at Brother Barnaby and his voice softened. “I believe you should say the prayer for the dead, Brother.”
Sir Ander and Father Jacob bowed their heads and folded their hands as Brother Barnaby, his face soft with sorrow and compassion, knelt down to close the staring eyes and say a prayer for all the souls lost and wandering in darkness....
Sir Ander gave up trying to sleep. He felt the need to talk, yet he knew better than to wake Father Jacob. Sir Ander opened the hatch, located in the front of the Retribution, and peered out.
“Would you mind if I join you, Brother?” he asked the monk.
“I would like the company, sir,” said Brother Barnaby, pleased.
The driver’s station on the Retribution was located in the front of the yacht and, of necessity, was partially open to the elements. The black-lacquered hull enclosed the cabin and storage rooms and supported a small mast and a ballast balloon. Wings swept back from the curve of the prow, running the length of the twenty-foot hull. Small airscrews were mounted at the rear of each wing, close to the hull. Polished brass rails ran along the roof of the cabin. Brass lanterns, mounted every four feet, and brass hardware for the doors and windows completed the yacht’s regal look. The symbol of the Arcanum: a crossed sword and a staff over which burns a flame set on a quartered black-and-gold shield, was painted on both sides of the hull.
Brother Barnaby took pride in the yacht. He saw to it that the brass was always polished to a high sheen, though Father Jacob maintained caustically that polishing the brass every day was a waste of time.
Sir Ander joined the monk at the driver’s seat and settled himself on the bench behind the windscreen.
Brother Barnaby glanced at him. “Do you mind if we talk of what happened this night, sir?”
The night air was refreshing, and Sir Ander breathed deeply. The two wyverns, barely seen in the darkness, moved their wings in tandem. Brother Barnaby held the reins loosely. The gentle monk had a way with animals. He had picked and trained the wyverns himself. Wyverns were notoriously illtempered and recalcitrant, but these wyverns, guided by Brother Barnaby, were submissive and eager to please.
Sir Ander watched as the monk reached out to touch a small brass helm located to his right. The helm was set with magical constructs that glowed with a golden radiance. As his fingers touched a sigil within one particular construct, correcting a list to starboard, the color shifted red.
“What would you like to talk about, Brother?” Sir Ander asked, though he already knew.
“I do not like to talk so much as I feel the need,” said Brother Barnaby. He looked at the ballast balloon above them and frowned slightly. His fingers slid across the control panel and touched several sigils that adjusted the yacht’s trim to compensate for the slight cross breeze.
Sir Ander regarded the young monk with concern. “I feared what you witnessed tonight would upset you, Brother. Father Jacob was remiss in allowing you to come with us.”
“I needed to see, sir,” said Brother Barnaby. “As Father Jacob says, ‘if we are to fight evil, we must look it in the face, no matter how dreadful the aspect.’ ”
Sir Ander shook his head. He knew he would see the mutilated corpses in his nightmares for the rest of his life. He would have spared any man that sight, but particularly Brother Barnaby.
The young monk was a foundling. The monks of the Order of Saint Anton had discovered the babe wrapped in a blanket, left on the doorstep on a warm summer’s night. They had taken in the child and raised him.
Brother Barnaby had grown up believing himself to be a child of God. He had been nurtured and loved by the monks, who had soon discovered the child had a talent for magical healing and a way with animals. They had taught him to read and write and cipher and how to use the magic that was God’s gift. When Barnaby was older, he had studied the lore of herbs and medicines and had become adept at tending to the ills and hurts of beasts and men.
Then one day when he was sixteen years old, as he had been placing his offering of candles on the altar, Brother Barnaby’s patron saint—Saint Castigan, guardian of children and animals—had appeared to him in a vision.
“Serve this man,” said the saint. He had held his hand over the head of a man dressed in a black cassock denoting him to be a member of the Order of the Arcanum.
Brother Barnaby had never doubted that vision. He had told the abbot he was leaving to find the man revealed to him by Saint Castigan. The monks of the abbey had been upset and disturbed. The abbot had tried to dissuade the young man. He could hardly argue against Saint Castigan, however, and he had at last given Brother Barnaby permission to leave. The abbot had perhaps been well aware that if he had not given his permission, the determined young monk would have left anyway.
Brother Barnaby had walked the three hundred miles to the Citadel of the Voice, where the select few priests admitted into the Arcanum lived and worked. He had arrived at the gates barefoot and in rags, half-starved, thin and weary, but joyful. He had said simply he was here on orders from Saint Castigan to serve a man whose name he did not know. The young monk then provided them with the description of the man in his vision.
The Provost of the Arcanum had immediately recognized Father Jacob Northrup and summoned him at once. When Father Jacob had entered the office, Brother Barnaby smiled in recognition, though they had never before met.
“Saint Castigan sent me to serve you, Father. He said you needed me.”
“Why would the saint say that?” Father Jacob had asked, regarding the young man with interest.
“I have no idea, Father,” Brother Barnaby had replied humbly. “All I know is that I am here and I will serve you and the saint most faithfully.”
The Provost had been dubious about accepting this obviously cloistered and naïve young man into the Arcanum and would have sent the young monk back to his abbey, but Father Jacob had found Brother Barnaby “fascinating” and insisted on keeping him, much to the dismay of Sir Ander.
“I need a scribe, after all,” Father Jacob had argued. “This Barnaby is a true innocent.”
“He is, indeed,” Sir Ander had said sternly. “You cannot take on this young man because you want to study his brain, Jacob. Such an innocent young person should not be exposed to the evil you and I see on a daily basis.”
“Brother Barnaby is stronger than you think, my friend,” Father Jacob had said. “And he has a mission to fulfill in this life. I do not know what that mission is, nor does he. But Saint Castigan knows and the saint and I both believe Barnaby will find his purpose traveling with us, not sheltered behind the walls of some reclusive monastery.”
And so, here was Brother Barnaby, driving the wyverns and trying to make sense of the senseless.
“This young man led his followers to their deaths. He drove them to commit terrible acts and then urged them to sacrifice themselves, while he himself escaped. What horrible force drives him, Sir Ander? Why did he do it?”
“That is not an easy question to answer,” said Sir Ander. “I’m not sure I want to try to understand. Father Jacob believes the Warlock obeys a master, or rather a mistress, an older woman who schooled him.”
“The one known as the Sorceress.”
“Yes. We know very little about her or this so-called Warlock except that he preys on young people. He lures sons and daughters of peasants and of nobles to his cult. Any youth who is lonely, unhappy, and desperate falls easy victim to the Warlock’s charms and blandishments. Once he has them in his clutches, he uses opiates and the lusts of the body (I beg your pardon for speaking of such things, Brother) to keep them.”
“I find myself at odds . . .” Brother Barnaby gazed into the darkness, fumbling for the right words. “If you and Father Jacob had found this young man, Sir Ander, you would have killed him, wouldn’t you?”
“As God is my witness, yes,” said Sir Ander in grim tones. “I would have put a bullet in his skull without hesitation.”
“But he is only seventeen. Just a boy!”
“He stopped being a boy when he stabbed his first victim,” said Sir Ander. “This ‘boy’ deliberately placed that viper on the breast of a young girl, knowing she would die.”
“He has turned to evil,” said Brother Barnaby sadly. “But perhaps that was not his fault. Perhaps he is also a victim of this sorceress. He might be counseled, reclaimed . . .”
“You feel pangs of conscience when I swat a fly, Brother,” said Sir Ander, placing his hand on the monk’s arm. “Take comfort in the fact that we are not likely to confront him again, either him or his dark mistress. We now have more important matters to consider it seems.”
“The summons from the grand bishop about the poor nuns of Saint Agnes,” said Brother Barnaby somberly. “I have prayed for them this night.”
The guardsman on griffin-back had delivered a letter from the grand bishop that told of the massacre at the Abbey of Saint Agnes, ordering Father Jacob to drop whatever he was doing and report to the Bishop’s Palace at once.
Father Jacob had planned to spend the next day searching for clues, hoping to pick up the trail of the young Warlock. A man of single-minded purpose, Father Jacob was not happy to receive the bishop’s summons.
“Some other member of my Order must go,” Father Jacob had said brusquely.
“The bishop asked for you specifically, Father,” the rider had said. “He said you were the best.”
Sir Ander had waited confidently for Father Jacob to say no, he wasn’t leaving his investigation until it was finished. Father Jacob never had difficulty saying “no” to anyone, be it king or commoner or grand bishop.
Father Jacob had startled his friend. “Tell the bishop we will make all haste.”
Father Jacob was, in Sir Ander’s opinion, the wisest, most intelligent man the knight had ever known. Among all the priests of the Order of the Arcanum, Father Jacob was the best. The trouble was—he knew it, which often made him very difficult to live with.
Sir Ander and Brother Barnaby were startled by a sudden shout coming from inside the yacht.
“What a fool I have been! What a bloody, stupid fool! Where is that letter?” Father Jacob yelled.
“What is the matter, Father?” Brother Barnaby called out anxiously, trying to divide his attention between the control panel and the wyverns and the priest. “Do you need me?”
“He’s fine,” Sir Ander said irritably. “After all, he had a good night’s sleep.”
“Where is that letter?” Father Jacob demanded again.
“On the table,” Sir Ander returned, opening the hatch and pointing. “You’re looking straight at it!”
“You moved it,” Father Jacob said, grumbling. He dragged out a chair, sat down, and picked up the letter.
“Must be an odd sort of letter,” said Sir Ander to Brother Barnaby. “He’s casting a magical spell on it.”
As Rodrigo had cast a spell on the ashes of the letter in Alcazar’s fireplace, Father Jacob was casting a similar spell on this letter. But whereas Rodrigo had drawn sigils and lines connecting them and then physically connected the sigils and lines, using the magical energy within his own body to produce the magic, Father Jacob merely passed his hand over the letter. A shimmering light began to shine from the page.
Father Jacob Northrop was a savant: one of those rare persons who, as the saying went, “was born of magic.” As there are some people who can arrive at the answer of a complicated mathematical equation without going through the steps of adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing, Father Jacob could work magic without the need for all the intervening steps leading to the end result.
Father Jacob looked up from the letter.
“What was the name of that abbey where all those nuns were killed?”
“Saint Agnes, Father.”
“That’s what I thought. Come in here for a moment. I need to speak to you.”
Sir Ander left Brother Barnaby a
nd climbed back through the hatch, inside the yacht. Father Jacob was sitting at the table, the letter in his hand. The magic he had cast on it still glowed faintly.
“This letter is from our friend, Master Albert Savoraun. You remember him? He worked with us on the affair of the naval cutter, Defiant. Master Albert has recently been made head of the Maritime Guild chapter in Westfirth.”
“Good for him,” said Ander heartily.
“That is not what is important,” Father Jacob said impatiently. “What is important is that he needed to review the records of the guild and discovered that they were not in the guildhall. Following a great fire that had destroyed parts of the city, the records were moved for safekeeping to a nearby abbey. The Abbey of Saint Agnes . . .”
“I’ll be damned!” said Sir Ander, startled into alertness. “That’s a strange coincidence.”
“You know I do not believe in coincidence,” said Father Jacob. He referred again to the letter. “Master Albert writes: ‘I found the information in the abbey to be of the utmost importance. I cannot stress its value. So important I dare not write it.’ ”
“Not even in a letter that requires a knowledge of magic to read?” Sir Ander asked with a smile.
The letter was seven pages long and, on the surface, contained mostly news of the antics of Master Albert’s ten children. The true contents of the letter had been written with a magical cipher that required a magical counter cipher to read.
“Apparently not,” said Father Jacob. He indicated the date on the top of the letter. “Master Albert wrote this letter a fortnight ago. The letter was addressed to the Arcanum, the Citadel of the Voice where we normally reside. The Provost received it there and forwarded it to me in Capione, which is why it took so long to reach me. And now we hear from the grand bishop that this very abbey has been attacked and the nuns who lived there murdered.”
Father Jacob sat pondering. “How far are we from the Bishop’s Palace in Evreux?”
Sir Ander consulted his pocket watch. “We have been flying for about ten hours now. I would say we were within an hour of arrival.”
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