Leta nodded, accepting the information without question. Sadly, it was not an unusual tale. In any given week, over half the patients she saw were condemned by the court. She pricked the man’s forehead, and for a moment starred into the man’s lively eyes.
“Please, I have done nothing wrong.” The man implored her with a sweet voice that hid the evil residing within his soul. “They call me a rebel, but all I’ve done is speak the truth. Why is the Throne of Roses so afraid of words? You cannot condemn me to death. This is murder!”
“Tsk-tsk,” chided Beli, placing her hand over the man’s mouth. “Silence your serpent tongue.”
Leta had learned long ago that it was best not to speak with the afflicted. She fought off the sensation of pity and laid her palm against the man’s forehead. “Blessed be the gods of Calaban.” The man’s body began to tremble as the baleful spirit trapped within came to terms with its fate. She walked to the next patient and began the sacrament anew.
If only this hand could truly heal, though Leta, as she pressed the pale flesh of her palm against the sweltering brow of a young mother.
“Blessed be the gods of Calaban.”
The woman said nothing.
“She has eaten her tongue, my lady,” said Beli.
Leta sighed and moved on.
The Hand of God is what the people called her. She knew such words were foolish and misguided, but her father insisted it was true. She had touched the Throne of Roses and survived. The throne broke most who touched it, yet Leta had passed the test relatively unscathed. Her left hand had turned ghostly pale, cobwebbed with white streaks, but she was otherwise without physical mark.
“Blessed be the gods of Calaban.”
“Until the fates overcome us,” said the next patient, a gnarled old woman many times Leta’s age.
What few knew, not even her father, was that she was not the only one who touched the Throne of Roses on that fateful day. Meriatis had perched himself atop the throne, arrogantly believing himself ready to face the gods. There he sat still as a statue, lost to the world, until Leta pulled him off. In the brief time in which she was in contact with the throne she had seen something terrible, that even today, she did not fully comprehend. But Meriatis had sat upon the throne for several minutes before she grew brave enough to yank him free. An unprepared mind was not meant to commune with the gods, yet Meriatis had. Looking back now, Leta had little doubt that this was the moment Meriatis turned against the gods.
“Blessed be the gods of Calaban,” said Leta, as she pressed a rose petal to the forehead of an elderly man who had skin like folded leather.
The afflicted patient responded by emitting a shiver-inducing cackle. “He is not your maker, but your master all the same,” said the man in a venomous voice that echoed from the vaulted ceilings. “You will face him in time, and all will be brought to shame. He will smother the land with brimstone and spoil, and all who remain will bend their backs in toil.” He lurched forward, pulling against his restraints with an unnatural strength. The leather bindings groaned, threatening to break. The Vacian Sister responsible for tending to the man rushed forward and looped a chain about the man’s neck, yanking his head back against the table.
Leta cursed under her breath. She knew the rest of the afflicted patients would recite the exact same cryptic passage from the Requiem of Cataclysms. It was always this way. One would quote the book, then the others would follow suit. It was as if they were all of the same mind. Leta was finished.
She ordered Sister Beli to grant last rights to the remaining condemned. Sister Beli stuffed a cotton ball in each ear and dutifully went about the task without complaint. She passed from patient to patient, humming quietly to herself as she splashed rosewater and pricked foreheads, paying no mind to the tirade of curses that now filled the hall.
The only patient who didn’t join in on the chant was the man who had claimed his innocence. Tugging at his restraints, he looked about himself in absolute horror. Leta pitied them all, but there was nothing else she could do.
Leta bathed her hand in scalding water. Although her fingers throbbed from the heat, she held them submerged. Herald Cenna assured her that heat was the only way to cleanse oneself of the affliction’s taint. Finally, when she couldn’t bear it any longer she relented to her instincts, and dried her hands on her dress. She slipped a flesh colored glove over her left hand, concealing the scar the Throne of Roses had given her. Leta waited until Sister Beli was finished before departing from the monastery to report to Herald Cenna.
She found the herald in an adjacent courtyard. A dozen school children were gathered around the elderly man, using the courtyard steps as a makeshift amphitheater. They were listening with feigned interest as Herald Cenna droned on about the three branches of the Sundered Soul.
The students were all dressed alike in white togas that were carefully starched to hold their flat, rigid shape. Leta remembered wearing the exact same attire when she was a child; the togas felt like sandpaper against bare skin. She almost had to laugh at their unenviable position, seated as they were in the sweltering sun in a scratchy toga while Herald Cenna prattled on about nothing of interest.
When Leta was a child there were over five hundred students enrolled at the Royal Academy. Noble houses from all over the realm sent their children to the academy. Now, there were only a few dozen students in attendance. There was anecdotal evidence that families were simply having fewer children, but Leta believed the Blackheart was the true cause of the dwindling enrollment. So many children were dying from the disease that parents were afraid to send their children off to school. It made Leta sad to think that these children would not share the same experiences she had while a child. I was raised in a time of hope, while these children live in a time of fear. She shook her head. The gods seemed to understand nothing of fairness.
Leta leaned against a support column that was part of the covered walkway that ran the interior perimeter of the palace compound. The stone was cool against her back, a relief after spending the morning in the stifling hot monastery. On the far side of the open plaza she could see the Sea of Ro spanning forever into the horizon. Waves were beating against the breakwater, and farther in the distance whitecaps foamed. A storm was rising in the east, great blooming clouds that rose above the gray water like anvils. She welcomed the breeze, certain that it would soon turn to rain. Rain is purifying, she thought. This whole damned city could use a good bath.
“You are all brittle twigs, dancing in the breeze,” said Herald Cenna, lecturing to the group of bored students. “But as you age you will become as hard as oak or as wispy as the willow. Your souls will become resilient, and in time, you might even have branches of your own.” His eyes were half-closed as he talked, and he looked likely to fall asleep at any moment. “Such is the nature of the Sundered Soul, it divides and expands, and it converges and collapses — an eternal cycle of death and rebirth. But it has not always been this way. Once, there was only a single soul, the One Soul as it were called. But it was broken asunder into its three essential parts — light, shadow, and fate.” Herald Cenna splayed his fingers for effect, forming three branches sprouting from his palm. He wiggled his thumb. “The people of Merridia are children of the light.”
One of the pupils eagerly waved his hand over his head and blurted out a question. “If we are all just branches of the same One Soul, what does that make the Cul?” asked the child, a blue-eyed boy with hair the color of sand. “Surely we are not related to those devils.”
“I wish I could say you are right, but it is widely accepted that the Cul are the demon spawn of the Shadow,” said Cenna, wiggling another finger. “All life exists somewhere along the web, the Cul included.”
A little girl seated in the front row gasped and stuck out her tongue as if she had eaten something sour.
The blue-eyed boy snickered at the notion. “We’re all related, eh?” He ribbed the student seated next to him with his elbow, a young girl with
a sullen face. “You’re great-grandsire might have been a Cul, Ionni. That would explain why your father is such an untrustworthy sot.”
The victim of the accusation stood up and balled her fists. “If you don’t stop running your mouth, I’ll put my fist through it.”
The boy began to cackle in the girl’s face, which was a poor emulation of a Cul’s call. The girl cocked back her arm and was about to punch the boy when Herald Cenna intervened. “That’s quite enough, Ionni,” said Herald Cenna, as he waded in amongst the children and separated the two. “Master Petrius, you can stand next to me for the remainder of the class. No complaining - you’ve earned this one.”
Leta recognized the boy. He was Orso Petrius, the son of General Saterius Petrius. She couldn’t help but think that the child had inherited his father’s ugly face.
“To elaborate on Master Petrius’s rude outburst, we are no more related to the Cul than we are the sharks in the sea and the birds in the sky,” said Herald Cenna, keen on making this a teachable moment.
Leta had known Herald Cenna since she was a child, only back then he was Brother Cenna and the headmaster of the Royal Academy. She had once sat in the exact spot these children were in now and listened to Cenna lecture. At a later point in life, Cenna was the one who held her hand as they lowered her husband’s body into a sarcophagus. Cenna was at her bedside when she gave birth to her son, and he stood beside her when her sweet child succumbed to the Blackheart. Cenna was a kind man with a gentle soul, yet with age came a brooding, and while he used to talk only of forgiveness and love, a breath of doom had now seeped into all of his sermons.
Dark words for dark times.
A moan wafted from beyond the wall that separated the monastery from the central plaza. Leta grimaced. The Blackheart victims were being taken to Sir Rupert. The children began to tilt their heads this way and that as they tried to home in on the disquieting noise. A wet smack floated from beyond the wall, like an ax hewing green wood.
“Harrumph.” Leta coughed loudly into her hand. “Herald Cenna, if I may interrupt.” She nodded in the direction of the monastery.
“Hmm, ah yes! Of course, Priestess Leta. We need to talk don’t we?” He waved at the collection of students, dismissing them with a flick of his wrist. “Go, have lunch. Report back at noon. I’m not done with my lecture on the One soul.”
The students ran off as if they had just been released from prison. Leta kept an eye on the departing children to guarantee that Orso and the bullied girl went in separate directions.
When she looked back to Herald Cenna, she found that one child had remained behind, an older boy in his mid-teens. He hobbled forward on a pair of crutches and positioned himself obediently at Herald Cenna’s side. The red sash he wore across his chest indicated he was a leech boy, a first year initiate in the Tiber Order. He was tasked with serving as Herald Cenna’s assistant in the oftentimes unsettling task of transfusion.
“How many patients were there today?” asked Herald Cenna, once the children were out of earshot.
“Twelve,” answered Leta.
There was a second chop from beyond the wall, which caused Cenna to flinch.
“Twelve. Hmm, that’s odd,” said Cenna, thumbing at his chin. He was a member of the council that decided the fate of the afflicted. “I thought we sent you eleven. Jot that down, Treves.”
Cenna’s assistant rummaged through his pockets until he found parchment and a charcoal pencil. He struggled to balance on his crutches and write at the same time.
Herald Cenna sighed. “I’ll have to check my notes when I get back to my study. If I remember correctly, there were a few nasty ones mixed in with this lot, victims with souls as black as night. I hope the blessing and final sacrament went smoothly.”
Leta smiled sheepishly. She didn’t wish to bother the old herald with her problems, but she had noticed an unsettling pattern. This was the fifth time the Blackheart victims had begun to recite that dreadful passage from the Requiem of Cataclysm since she took over sacrament duties from her father.
She was about to tell Herald Cenna as much when she noted Treves was writing furiously. He’s recording a summary of our meeting, Leta realized. She wasn’t keen on having an account of her own inadequacies recorded on paper; Cenna she could trust, but there was no telling who else might get their hands on those papers. She sighed, deciding it was best to keep the information to herself for the time being. “All went well, herald,” she lied.
“Good, very good. You’re doing the work of the gods, you know. You are granting them a chance to rejoin the Sundered Soul cleansed of their sins, and more importantly cleansed of the Blackheart’s taint.”
“Do you believe that, herald?”
He appeared genuinely offended. “Am I not Herald of the Tiber Order? I would be a poor representative of the gods if I didn’t stand behind the testaments of my faith.”
“Then you believe that Meriatis is damned. A broken branch of the Sundered Soul, forever doomed to torment because he did not receive his final sacrament.” In her mind’s eye she envisioned the Sundered Soul as she had been taught. A core of light, brighter than the sun, from which sprung a million upon a million branches. Each tendril of light was a soul, an essence of life. Then she envisioned some of the tendrils of light growing dim and shedding from the core of light like cankered limbs dropping from a tree.
Cenna’s lips pursed, and his skin creased along wrinkles he had earned from a long life of frowning. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you believe it,” said Leta. The scratch of Treves’s charcoal pencil grated on her nerves, and she had to fight the impulse to rip the parchment out of his hand. “You’re a fatalist. You’re resigned to the fact that not everyone can be saved.”
“There are things we cannot change, and your brother’s fate is one of them. We can remember him, both the good and the bad, and learn from his mistakes. It is our task to live a good life, graced by the fair gifts of our gods and tempered by the edicts laid out in the holy scriptures. We must check our desires, our wants, and our greed. Your brother failed in that regard, and thus his soul must pay an eternal price. So say we who have the faith.”
“Until the fates overcome us,” said Leta, under her breath.
“Until the fates overcome us,” echoed Treves, as he continued to jot down notes.
“Until the fates overcome us,” said Herald Cenna, nodding with satisfaction.
The first crack of thunder tolled overhead and large droplets of rain began to spatter against the cobblestone. Leta took this as her cue to leave. She curtsied and smiled, outwardly accepting Cenna’s judgment of her brother. But in truth, she felt awful inside, like there was a cancer eating at her soul.
The problem was, she understood her brother’s scorn for the Calabanesi. How could she love the gods while they let the Blackheart run rampant? How could she love the gods after they allowed her mother, husband, and son to die? It was in this thought that she came to a dark certainty about her faith.
I don’t love the gods, realized Leta. I fear them.
Perhaps that was precisely what the gods wanted.
CHAPTER
VIII
LETTERS IN THE DARK
Winter upon the Sea of Ro came heavy that year. Snow drifts piled to the second floor windows of buildings, and for the first time in living memory many of the canals froze solid. Word from the west was even worse. Ice dams had formed on the Osspherus River, threatening to give way and flood the towns and villages downstream. The people of Etro reported that Mount Calaban had been hidden behind storm clouds since the start of the season. The flow of traders out of Emonia slowed to a pitiful crawl. Food prices soared.
Emethius hoped the harsh weather would cause people to hole up in their homes beside a warm fire and thus bring a sort of forced tranquility upon the city. That didn’t prove to be the case.
Although the war was officially over, peace did not return to Mayal. Repercussions of the rebellion co
uld be felt everywhere. Public trials were held for several of Prince Meriatis’s co-conspirators. Most were executed, their hanging bodies left on display in the city’s central plaza for over a month. Angry loyalists, seeing it as a demonstration of their faith to weed out the godless rebel sympathizers, picked up where the tribunal left off. Homes gutted by the fires of lynch mobs sat derelict and unattended, and on more than one occasion, the people of Mayal woke up to discover a tarred and feathered body swinging from what people were now calling the Hangman’s Bridge.
The truth was, people were using the rebellion as an excuse to go after personal foes. Emethius imagined nine out of ten accusations were false. Foreigners and the destitute got it the worst. Entire families of runaway serfs were expelled from the city, accused of distributing rebel pamphlets. Their guilt couldn’t be proven, but no one came forward to attest to their innocence either. Emethius was disgusted that the Court of Bariil did nothing to stop the madness, but the word on the street was that High Lord Valerius was doing everything he could just to keep his throne.
For his own part, Emethius decided to keep his head down. By killing Meriatis, he had made more enemies than he could count. Rebel sympathizers blamed him for the failure of their movement, while loyalists didn’t trust him because he was once Meriatis’s best friend. He doubted anyone had the gall to accuse him of being a rebel, but that didn’t mean a lynch mob wouldn’t descend on his house in the dead of night to enact the people’s justice. Emethius made sure to always sleep with his sword close at hand.
Praetor Maxentius had suggested Emethius return to his family estate outside of Henna Lu until calm returned to the city. Emethius saw the wisdom in Maxentius’s advice, but each time he prepared to leave Mayal, he delayed, lying to himself that he would only stay for a few more days. A few days turned into a week. A week turned into a fortnight. Then the snows came, and that settled matters. He wasn’t going anywhere until spring.
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