When he reached the camp, he saw it was … disorganized. Hastily erected lean-tos, three of them, that would barely keep a drizzle off their occupants. The canvas was patched in many places, its edges frayed. A ripe stench came from behind nearby bushes where they’d dug a shallow hole to use as a latrine. Close by lay the half-butchered carcass of a deer, uncovered.
Aldric wrinkled his nose and frowned. Preparing meat this close to their waste, and leaving the carcass for any nearby scavenger to eat—either they were lazy or stupid, or didn’t think they’d be here long. Judging by the state of their camp, he decided it was probably all three.
With a critical eye, he examined their gear. Mostly worn canvas packs, frequently repaired bedrolls, and battered pots and tin plates. An old mule tied to a tree stared at him as he walked a circle around the fire, which was still warm and trailed tendrils of smoke. Beside the fire sat a pot with the remnants of a stew. Flies buzzed around it, alighting on the rim and walking down the inside wall.
To all appearances, it looked like the treasure hunters were locals who’d stumbled across the ruins and decided to take a chance. But at least one of them had to have circumvented the wards woven into the door, and that meant sorcery. There was a chance, albeit a small one, that the locals were here only to help the sorcerer. Paid to do the manual work and to keep their mouths shut.
From the back of Aldric’s mind rose another possibility, one that made him more than a little uneasy. The Church’s ancient enemy still had followers, and they were as dedicated to their cause as Aldric was to his—if not more so.
Squatting by the tidiest lean-to, he picked through the gear. It was of better quality and looked well cared for. The backpack was double stitched, and the blanket newly purchased. Inside the pack were spare clothes, along with a sewing kit, a flask of rum, and writing materials. Nothing arcane, but that was no surprise. Talismans and other aids were no use unless you had them with you.
Aldric closed the backpack and stood. He hadn’t expected to find evidence of demon worship, but it paid to be careful. He couldn’t afford any slipups, not in his line of work. Cleaning up for the Church was dangerous business, and he took his vocation seriously. His god had given him gifts, so it was only right and fitting that he used them to benefit the Church. Or so the priests had drummed into him from a young age. For Aldric, sorcery was a necessary evil. A path he had never wanted, but he did what he was told. The Church had invested a great deal of coin in his training.
Enough speculation. There was no evidence so far that this was anything more than a simple raid to plunder the treasures of the ruin. But he loosened his khopesh in its sheath again, adjusted his long gray, time-worn coat, and made sure his sorcerous defenses were ready to erupt at a moment’s notice. They weren’t strong, but they’d gotten him out of a few bad situations. With any luck, he wouldn’t need them.
Shrieks and cries reached his ears. Faint. If he hadn’t been listening for them, they might have gone unnoticed. Back toward the ruin, startled birds scattered from trees. Aldric felt a pinch in his gut.
He made his way quickly back to the open ruin, this time not caring if he made noise. The gaping darkness seemed to welcome him. Ice-cold, dank air brushed his face as he stood just inside the stone door. In the glow of the violet scaleskins, he could see a dozen steps descending. Where they ended, a stone corridor sloped farther down, rime frost crusting its walls.
For a moment, he felt an absurd fear that he was wrong. That the sorcerer and his companions would survive. Then he felt sickened. What had he become, that he wanted people to die so he wouldn’t have to do the terrible deed himself? It was his duty to ensure that none outside the Church knew of the ruins and how to breach them. The artifacts inside were better left undisturbed: sorcerous relics that would damn a weak soul and perhaps lead to the return of the demons.
As he squinted into the darkness, someone howled. A sound of pure terror torn from a throat.
With grim resolve Aldric descended the steps. He needed to see what happened, to bear witness.
Far along the tunnel, a brief flutter of light appeared and grew brighter. A man’s voice shouted cants between gibberish outbursts. Aldric recognized some of the wards—against violence, and to create barriers. Incandescent flashes were followed by thunderous rumblings. Loud slaps reverberated off the frost-covered walls. The fungus glowed brighter as it absorbed arcane emanations.
Aldric saw that the tunnel descended only thirty paces before opening into an antechamber. On the far side of the chamber was another doorway. A man bolted through it, a talisman in his hand—a wooden rod festooned with feathers that spread a pale yellow light. His eyes were deranged, and his face a twisted mask of horror. Sweat dripped from his hair, spraying around him as he ran.
He cast a frantic glance behind him, breath steaming in the frigid air, and screamed to someone farther down the tunnel, “Run, you fool!”
Aldric swallowed, touched a hand to the catalyst in his chest, and prepared a cant himself. Whatever they’d disturbed was powerful, and his own sorcery couldn’t hope to match it. But that wasn’t his job, and he’d be stupid to try. No matter how much he wanted to.
Another light appeared behind the sorcerer, and the air filled with unintelligible murmurs that quickly rose to a drone as intense as the hum of a beehive. Aldric caught a glimpse of limbs flailing, and then the glow vanished and a spray of blood showered from the tunnel, splattering the sorcerer and the frost-rimed stone around him. Steam curled up from its contact with the cold, quickly dissipating in the air.
Aldric felt his gorge rise. He swallowed it back down, breathing heavily through his nose. Fear gripped him, but he knew it was a minuscule thing compared to the sorcerer’s.
A violent gust howled through the chamber. When it tore at Aldric’s hair, he smelled blood and sulfur and wood smoke—a combination he recognized.
A Reaper. Holy Menselas.
Reapers were sorcerous creatures, the knowledge of their making thankfully lost millennia ago. An amalgamation of human and animal parts, each one was unique. But they were all mongoose fast and bull strong and immune to all but the most puissant sorcery. Aldric knew he couldn’t prevail against one. Neither his fighting skills nor his sorcery would suffice. Although if he could bring himself to access his dusk-tide repository … No. The dark power was too unsettling and he disdained its use when he could. Its touch was … unholy.
The sorcerer howled, feet slipping in the gore. His talisman jolted from his hand as he fell, clattering to the side and sending shadows flickering. His hands and feet scrabbled to find purchase as he attempted to regain his footing.
The urge to help rose within Aldric, and he took a stuttering step forward before retreating. The commands of his Church were very clear. And if the Reaper was so close, it was too late.
The sorcerer slipped again, then managed to get up and stumble forward, whimpering and cursing. He looked toward the exit, so close, and his eyes widened as he saw Aldric. Hope blossomed on his face.
“Help! Please …”
Curiously numb, Aldric shook his head. He didn’t have a bow or crossbow to distract or delay the Reaper. And in any case, if he did, he’d use it to put the sorcerer out of his misery. For what was coming for him was far worse than a quick, clean death.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I cannot.” And, hardening his heart, he took a step backward, then hastily ascended the steps.
As soon as he was outside, he uttered a cant, and his catalyst reacted. The ancient wards, so recently deactivated, flared anew. Stone ground against stone as the door began to shut.
“No!” screamed the sorcerer. “You can’t—”
His words, along with the murmuring hum of the Reaper, were cut off as the door resealed the ruin.
Aldric took a deep breath, then another. He wiped his eyes.
One final check.
He awakened his divine sight bestowed upon him by his god along with his ability to heal others. Th
e stone door glowed a pale rose, then brightened to a lurid purple as its sorcerous wards gradually re-established themselves. Good. The fell tomb was sealed, and it would take another foolhardy sorcerer to breach it again.
Aldric leaned against the door’s rough surface. He felt drained, weak. And, ashamedly, relieved. He whispered a prayer under his breath for the dead.
Back at the camp, he built up the fire and dismantled the lean-tos. When the blaze was big enough, he burned all the men’s belongings. Out here in the wilderness, there was no one to see the smoke.
When the fire died down, he extinguished the ashes with water from a nearby stream. The mule kept an eye on him.
“A hard day,” he told it. “And I fear it won’t get any easier. Come on.”
Untying the beast, he led it back to where he’d secured his horse. It shouldn’t be left out here for the wolves or the Dead-eyes.
~ ~ ~
It took three weeks of hard travel before the familiar haze of the seething metropolis of Nagorn City, Aldric’s home for many years, came into sight. He’d left the mule at the first settlement he’d come across and hadn’t taken any coin for it. It was hard enough in the wilderness, and the mule would go a small way to easing someone’s life.
Nagorn City was ancient, older by far than the generations of farmers and settlers who’d toiled and died in the lands surrounding the great city. Historians believed it had survived the last three cataclysms, which made it older than Kharas in the hot southern reaches and Sansor in the heathen realm of Kaile far to the west, but not as old as Caronath in the north. Its enclosing wall had been built over centuries and showed the work of diverse hands and times: rough-hewn rock alongside sharper, regular stone carved by arcane means long ago, and cheap and hastily erected brick defenses on top.
Once inside the massive gates, Aldric had to breathe through his mouth until he became re-accustomed to the odor. He hadn’t missed the overpopulated warren of tenements and businesses. The air was filled with a fine dust, and the paved streets were littered with dirt and rubbish and manure. It had clearly been a while since the last downpour had scoured them clean.
In his time away, nothing had changed. People still hurried about their tasks; dogs and cats and rats roamed the back alleys; and out-of-work citizens congregated around communal noticeboards. To Aldric’s eye, there seemed to be more people down on their luck this year than any other before.
As he made his way through the streets, his gray skin elicited curious looks from farmers and traders and travelers. Surreptitiously, he tugged his sleeves down and his hood closer about his face. He forgave them their curiosity; after all, there were many races spread throughout the lands of Wiraya. And some were rarer in some cities than others. There weren’t many of his race this far north. The San-Kharr were more plentiful in the south, where they originated, and those of full blood were much darker than Aldric with his diluted ancestry.
An hour later he squared away his gear and mount in the Church’s stables, then made his way to the rooms allotted to him. Although small and furnished with dilapidated, mismatched pieces, they were enough for his needs. He washed off the dirt and grime he’d accumulated in the wilderness. There had been plenty of streams and lakes on his journey, but only a fool would splash around naked out there. It was a recipe for getting your throat cut or for being hacked apart by Dead-eyes—after they’d defiled you and made you wish you’d never been born.
Dressed again in shirt and trousers, he made a point of buckling on his khopesh and hanging his talisman from his belt. Every sorcerer used one—a concentration, logic, and mathematical calculation aid created at the start of their Covenant training. Arcane formulas were complex, requiring the sorcerer’s awareness to split into many different parts, and a talisman made the difficult task slightly easier. Aldric’s was a smooth, wooden, rounded-edged pentagon that snuggled into his palm when he used it, and hung from a chain on his belt when he didn’t. It was etched with runes and had five sides: one for each of Menselas’s aspects. Aldric had made it early in his tenure with the Covenant of the Evokers, which was where the Church had sent him when his arcane power became manifest—once they’d overcome their revulsion. The lessons and training had been hard, and made all the harder by Aldric’s resistance. His colleagues never liked seeing the talisman, and showing it was a small act of defiance on his part. The god had given him his gifts, and he used them to further the Church’s goals.
Casting his troubled thoughts aside, Aldric made his way to Archbishop Roald’s office. As he passed novices and other priests, they lowered their eyes and sidestepped out of his path. Aldric ignored them in turn, but frowned at their attitude. Didn’t they know he kept them all safe? Didn’t they know that Menselas—god of the Five Aspects—had given him gifts only bestowed upon a few? Of course they did, but they also knew he was a sorcerer. As always, the knowledge of what he could do, as opposed to what he was directed to do, left him seething. All those months out in the wilderness, risking himself, and his own Church treated him like a pariah. It was unacceptable. Yet he’d accepted it for years. No, not accepted: tolerated. There was a difference.
When he found the archbishop absent from his office, Aldric decided to wait while he calmed down. He glanced around the reception room with its desk and comfortable lounges, shrugged, and entered the archbishop’s study. It was tastefully decorated with polished furniture, tapestries hanging from the walls, and worn rugs covering the floor. Dust motes floated in the air, lit by windows on one side. Bookcases were filled to overflowing, and there was a faint scent of an alchemical cleaning solution. On one wall hung a circular brass astrolabe used to track the moons, planets, and stars. It was the size of a large dinner plate, of Kawib design, and powered, Aldric knew, by ensorcelled orichalcum, a rare metal prized for its ability to hold sorcery and its superior corrosion resistance. It would have cost far more than Roald could afford as an archbishop. Perhaps it came with the office.
Aldric poured himself a drink from one of the numerous bottles behind the large hardwood desk. It was after noon, wasn’t it? Crystal chimed as the bottle’s neck met the glass. Expensive. Both the glassware and the spirit showed the archbishop didn’t skimp on luxuries.
Aldric gulped a mouthful of the liquor, which burned his throat and made his eyes water. He didn’t normally drink, except at dinner, but for some reason he felt the need.
Deciding it would be best not to get caught trespassing, he returned to the reception room. In one corner, next to a leafy plant in a glazed ceramic pot, stood a padded armchair. He unbuckled his khopesh belt and leaned the blade against the wall, then sat down to wait.
He was debating a second drink when the door opened and a priestess walked in. She was wearing the usual drab gray wool dress, and her hair was covered with a dark blue scarf. Aldric recognized her bright blue eyes and dimpled cheeks. He’d seen her around the church and its grounds, but didn’t know her name. There had been rumor of a dalliance between her and someone higher up—which itself was nothing unusual, as plenty of priests married; after all, one aspect of Menselas was the Mother—but unconsecrated sexual relationships between the clergy were frowned upon.
“Oh!” she said as he rose from his chair. “I didn’t see you there. Archbishop Roald is booked for the day. You’ll have to make an appointment.”
Her eyes strayed to Aldric’s khopesh and the symbol engraved into its hilt, and then to where the same symbol was embroidered on his shirt—a five-pointed star surrounded by a circle of runes, the meaning of which would be incomprehensible to her. She swallowed and edged around the desk until it was between them. Aldric knew she thought he was damned, that the mark of Menselas within him was an anomaly, a travesty of all that was holy.
“Roald will see me,” he said. “When will he be back?”
“You have to make an appointment. He’s very busy.”
“When will he be back?”
Aldric’s words came through clenched teeth. Each of
these slights stung him like salt on an open wound.
Her eyes flicked to the door. “I don’t know.”
Soon, then. “I’ll wait.”
He sat back down and gazed out the window. The priestess stared at him for a few moments before sniffing and settling herself behind the desk. She shuffled papers, jotted notes, and generally made herself look busy. Aldric, pretending not to notice her fleeting glances at him, settled back into the chair and closed his eyes briefly. Any longer and he might fall asleep. His limbs were heavy, and his back ached. Not only was he tired, but his mind and soul were still troubled after what had happened at the ruin.
Shortly past the noon bell, the door opened again. This time it was Roald. His pale skin was dried and papery with age, but his black velvet robes were brushed and spotless, and five plain rings gleamed on his fingers, one unique metal for each aspect of Menselas. Apart from the pious bands, Roald wore no other jewelry. His archbishop’s ring, presented upon ordination, was worn only at public functions. He radiated an air of sanctity and reasonableness.
His sharp eyes noticed Aldric immediately and he nodded in greeting. “Aldric, safe journey back, I take it?”
“Archbishop Roald, nothing untoward.” Aldric couldn’t say more in front of the priestess. He took up his khopesh and waited expectantly.
The archbishop turned to his secretary. “Dina, I need you to postpone today’s lunch with Bishop Thormin. Make some excuse.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned to Aldric. “Let’s adjourn to my study.”
They passed through the sturdy door, which Roald closed and bolted behind them, causing Aldric to feel a twinge of guilt at his earlier trespass.
“Did you find it?” Roald asked without preamble. He clasped both hands in front of him, fingers automatically tracing his rings.
Aldric nodded. “It was as you said. They’d found a ruin and opened it. How did you know?”
Roald waved a hand in dismissal. “What was this one like? Was it … normal?”
Revenant Winds (The Tainted Cabal Book 1) Page 2