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Fourteenth Verse
Trey poured over the six rolls of parchment spread open across his desk. Three he had drafted himself the previous night: one to Pyke at the Watcher’s Eye, one to Saint Paul, and the last to his Aunt, Duchess Ariel Stoltz, lady to the duke of Castle Aestas. As he pressed the signet cross into the wax of each seal, he prayed they would be enough to keep Corvin alive till his return. He could have asked for more, but Ba’al frowned on leaning on the Lord more than necessary. He trusted his Aunt would do what he requested and that the commander had been honest in his letter. “Whole villages gone.” The thought gave him chills—the thrill of crisis. The Cross could not ask for superior timing.
His eyes moved to the three letters received. With these it seemed God intervened of his own accord. Had the threat from Duskhall arrived even one day later, he would have marched himself into an early grave. Gildmane expected hostility from Lord Blackheart, but not that he would put a bounty on his head. The boldness of the west. At least they make decent ale. He laughed at his own joke, then considered a final time whether he should turn in Lord Gregander’s letter to the clergy. It was blasphemy and treason to threaten a holy order, yet Trey thought it likely the saint would prefer the whole event covered up—just as he ignored Quiet Harbor. The priest there, Father Angelo of the Quiet Tower, had been requesting help for the past few years, only all his letters were addressed directly to the Temple Rock. He might as well have been throwing them into a fire pit, but all the better for us.
There was no better way to win the west in Trey’s mind than to drain their swamps. They’d ride in, armour shining, and rescue the Watchers and whatever villages they happen to come across while hunting the pagans. The bards will sing of it, Gildmane mused. The westerners do love their stories. He imagined how the songs would go, of white knights routing nests of serpents, slaying ferocious brackdragons—and other monsters, assuming the clerics’ reports were true: demons in the fog; horses torn to pieces; men returning dismembered, always to die from corruption and madness, babbling ceaselessly of the Great Dead Mother—just another reason to go and take the promising squires with them. Harpe and Leonhardt could use the experience, and Ogdon…
The captain lingered ruefully over Lord Austen’s signature. Had it not come with a substantial donation, Trey would have burned the letter as soon as it entered his office. But it would not serve his cause to ignore a benefactor, and it would certainly worsen it if the noble gossip besmirched the Cross as a band of jumped-up thieves. So he was stuck with Sylvertre, as requested by the skylord, at least until Sir Brandon could be freed from the Temple dungeons.
And how am I to manage that? he thought. It seemed an impossible task after the riots. Vaufnar’s death had sparked a fire that burned incessant for three days and three nights. Half of the Dim was destroyed, the cathedral ransacked, the accusers murdered—even their children. Gildmane stopped reading the reports after the second day. He wanted to believe that these people were worth protecting. Fortunately, there wouldn’t be any such reports on the road, nor bribes from skylords, nor child-fondling clergyman. No, all that would be left behind for Paladin Mathew Gardner and Sir Buckly Armstrong.
Trey locked the read letters in a drawer in his desk and began drafting orders for the knight and his paladin. He wrote quickly, outlining duties he knew Gardner was long familiar with. The paladin had been around since before Captain Acker, and if not for Ba’al, it would likely have been him sitting in Trey’s chair, changing fate with an iron pen and endless rolls of parchment. Gildmane wondered if that was how God saw the world, just a pile of complaints to be signed or burned. But he had no more time for musing. He, like God, must do his duty, so he sealed the orders and rose from his desk. He called for Leonhardt.
While Schirmer and his new squire were waiting for them in the yard, probably already ahorse given their northern blood, Trey had yet to even don his armour. And for that he would want Jael, but she seemed nowhere to be found. He called again, yet it was Ogdon who appeared at his office threshold. Leonhardt had gone to the Temple cloister, Sylvertre explained, but that the captain shouldn’t worry because he agreed to take over her burdens till they were on the road. Trey dismissed him forthwith, then went to donning his harness on his own. It proved trickier business than he remembered, his fingers frustrated with the knots of his cuirass and pauldrons. And in his fiddling, he fell into thinking, about how much more he valued Jael than he originally thought. She’d proven herself a competent squire, a fighter, and a firebrand hot enough to spark unrest in half the city. Why, then, has Paul yet to make a move? Vaufnar’s murder and the riots were more than enough justification for the saint to act. So why doesn’t he? What does he want with her? Influence? Control? It seemed to the captain that Paul had neither, that whatever he planned must be falling apart, like the streets of Pareo—like the country—pagans to the west, to the north, to the south, and in the east their seat of power, godless Mephisto.
Trey thought of the Shroud of Solum and the image it had shown him: a man with the mane of a lion, the Messiah, if the relic was to be believed—that it could truly be the end of days. Another musing he had no time to indulge, that the final prophecy was a piece of stained linen hidden between his stockings in the bottom of his wardrobe. He laughed, Maybe I’m the Messiah. My sigil is a lion, after all. Paul could be the False Prophet, and that just leaves the Anarch Prince.
The thoughts kept him smirking all the way to the Temple doors where at once he put them out of his head. They were blasphemous as they were absurd, and dangerous. If a deacon or vicar heard them from a slip of his tongue, in jest or true, it would give cause enough for his arrest, and then everything he’d worked so hard to produce the last nine years would vanish. It was one of the bishop’s wisdoms, “Words can be murderous.” And as he crossed south through the Temple vestibule, God kindly reminded him of that truth. For three armed men barred his path, all in crimson tabards and shirts of maille—the Temple Guard, except Captain Holland King was missing. A blessing, thought Trey. The Kings were an irksome lot, and he dealt with enough trouble from Holland’s brother, Paladin Oswald. That he was gone meant that friends outnumbered enemies, that as Trey approached, he would be met with smiles from Sir Rillion Pyke and the youthful Sir Tristen Newaters. And grin they did, though the third knight, Sir Isaiah Wright, offered him naught but a grimace. He was a most serious man, Sir Isaiah, ashen and bald as a boiled egg, and just as dense. On his chest in white thread blazed a spread-winged eagle perched on the holy cross outlined in flame.
“What is your business here, paladin? His Holiness has ordered the cloister closed.”
Gildmane breathed two deep breaths of self-collection. “I’m on the search for my squire, Jael Leonhardt. Have you seen her? She comes here often to pray.”
“We’ve seen no one,” Sir Isaiah started, then Rillion interjected.
“Aye, lad. The lassie is inside.”
“How dare you, Pyke? Our orders were—”
The old knight turned and loomed over his companion, dwarfing the thin man in his abundant shadow. “You know, Wright, you’re right,” he said, placing his meaty hands on the other man’s chest, “so why don’t you go tell the captain about it? I’m sure he’d love to know. Go on, now,” finished Rillion, suddenly shoving Sir Isaiah through the gaping cloister door. It was Tristen who’d opened it, and it was Tristen who closed the door again, his back pressed against the polished wood, sliding as he laughed, unable to contain his mirth. He reminded Trey of himself when he was young, carefree as the hills of the north, safe behind the wall of Castle Aestas. They even looked similar, only Newaters’s hair and eyes and complexion were dun compared to Gildmane’s—shades of honey and clover to his emerald and gold.
Trey helped the young knight up, then beamed at Rillion. “You’ve got rocks of steel, old man.”
“Of salt,” he replied. “They only seem hard to you young lads cause you’re all so soft. Just look at thi
s one!” He pointed to giggling Sir Tristen with his thumb. “Like a maiden, that chin. I’ve never seen a peach so soft.”
Newaters began rubbing his jaw, embarrassed, then the three of them let out a fraternal guffaw. The captain could hardly speak without choking on his words. “Salt or steel, I’m impressed. It makes me wish I was knighted two decades earlier. The stories…what I wouldn’t give to have ridden with you.”
Pyke’s entire countenance brightened the room. His eyes sparkled. “Aye, lad, you came to manhood during the wrong reign. Under Lucius you’d have had a true chance to shine. They’d have called you the White Lion.”
“Wasn’t there already a ‘Lion’ back then?”
“And now,” Rillion answered. “Speaking of, how is the little beastie? I haven’t spoken with her since we gained sight of Ward Aureus.”
“Jael is serving quite well, though she struggles with her heart. I’m hoping our campaign out west will bring out her lion’s blood.”
“Taking her hunting, are we? Well, if killing heathens can make a man, no doubt it can turn a lass into a lion. And it will be good to get her away from all the uproar.”
“We heard about what happened in the Dim,” blurted Tristen. “The whole city is talking about it—rumors that the Cross’s lady-squire uncovered Vaufnar’s rape chamber.”
“Believe what you will,” Gildmane replied. Meanwhile, footfalls sounded from behind the cloister door—three pairs, then three men came marching through the threshold. Sir Isaiah appeared first, hunched and scowling, then Saint Paul in his common robes. He looked smaller without his crown and mantle, like any old man, without Æturnum. He moved through the doorway without a pause or so much as a glance at the paladin or anyone else. Sir Holland followed afterward and was just the opposite—fuming, furious and glaring, first at Rillion, then at Trey, and finally at Tristen as he barked their orders to depart with the saint.
“Say hello to my brother for me,” said Pyke, bowing.
Trey watched the Temple Guard round a corner and disappear down a hidden ambulatory. The Saint’s Way, layman called them, secret passages woven like a labyrinth throughout the Rock. Gildmane knew of a few of them, though no more than any church servant. They were the only means of accessing the upper and lower floors. The inner sanctum, the dungeons…Trey would need to learn of more Ways than these before the time came. Thank God, that’s a long way off, he thought, then he remembered Corvin imprisoned beneath his feet. What was it the saint said to Jael, he wondered, storming the cloister, his heart racing.
He found her pacing under the south-side arcade, staring north over the courtyard toward the golden Temple dome. It shone beautifully, though the winds were bitter, it captured the glimmer and glow of the sun and returned Heaven its glory. Only the Messaii cross atop the dome was brighter, shining the silver-white of frosted steel. Trey could see that light reflected in the deep brown of Leonhardt’s eyes, like a quivering flame, dying. She did not face him as he walked beside her, nor as he spoke.
“I saw Sir Rillion just now. He bid me to tell you that he says hello.”
“Wolves,” she said, still staring to the north. “He tried to warn me how bad it was. I thought I understood. You told me it would get worse, but I didn’t know. And it’s not like before. It’s my fault! And now Sir Corvin has been jailed, and all those people!”
“Jael,” started Gildmane, unsure what to say. “You did nothing wrong. You performed exactly how I knew you would. You were brave, and now no more children will be—”
“No,” she spat. Her cheeks flushed deep, and her eyes became a red web of veins. “They’re dead. They found the family’s bodies in the Cathedral more than a day ago. They say the boy was mangled and that Vaufnar was innocent—that the chamber I found hadn’t been touched in centuries! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Jael, who told you all this?” He knew the answer, yet he needed to hear it from her own lips.
“Saint Paul,” she admitted.
“And you believe him?”
A glimpse of fear lit upon her face. “It would be blasphemous not to.”
“That answers my question,” said Gildmane, then he led his squire to the center of the cloister yard where a circle of stones dressed a marble font. He sat her on a stone and knelt before her, his voice lowered to half a whisper. “Listen, Jael. I need you to make a choice. Things are going to become bloody soon. Where we’re going, what we’re likely to come back too—it’ll be war. You’ve seen for yourself the corruption in the church, as have I and good knights like Sir Rillion. And we want you on our side. I want you, Jael, but I need to know that you’re with us—with God and the people and the Cross.”
Leonhardt looked as though her heart were about to burst. She choked out her words, “‘With God and the people?’ Which side are they on? I thought I knew, and people died because of it. Because I was wrong.”
“People are going to die no matter what, and when that happens, the blood is on God’s hands. You can only control the story you tell yourself.” Trey charged her, “It’s up to you to decide what’s true: that you tried when no one else would to help the destitute victims of a protected criminal, that Vaufnar was guilty and the saint and the clergy already knew it, and now they are just trying to silence you by lying; or is it that the accusers lied to you and to Sir Brandon, that there just so happened to be a torture chamber in Vaufnar’s basement, and that he ran despite his innocence, despite God’s protection?”
Jael shook her head, “But what about the riots?”
“You can’t stop violence any more than you can stop people growing old or getting sick and dying. The riots in the Dim were inevitable. If not now, they might’ve happened in a year’s time.”
“Then what’s the point of trying?” she asked.
Trey smiled, “That’s for you to decide.”
After a long pause, she pressed a palm to her chest and said, “So it’s up to me to have faith in myself no matter how it turns out, just so long as I believe I’m doing the right thing?”
Just so long as it’s you who holds the power in the end to usher forth the world you intend. Aloud, he answered, “Now you understand the truth of it, squire. You’re on the road to becoming a real knight.”
Fifteenth Verse
At last, they were on their way. It had taken a entire day of marching to escape the Gautaman maze and another to reach the foothills which lay to the north. Adam thought it was thrilling at first, like they were on an adventure. But after two days hauling his body weight in provisions, his enthusiasm tempered in the frost-bitten winds. He could see the flurries breaking from the mountain peaks, bright and white and feathery as clouds. They were beautiful as they were terrifying, so unimaginably high above the rolling, rocky soil.
By the third day, the last signs of civilization had gone. There were no homesteads this far out, no distant villages, not even a road. Before and behind them was nothing but bamboo forest, pale in late autumn, turning gray as they climbed higher and higher where winter never died, where roots and burrows could hide in the snow, where their stockings and straw sandals soaked through to the bone like the cut of wind sharp as icicles. In this lesser Hell, their progress slowed. Despite the lightening of their packs with each breaking of camp, their feet became heavier, their legs cramped, their breath shorter—all except Adnihilo.
The half-blood had changed so much that Adam would not have recognized him a month ago. His bushy hair was tied back in a knot and his roughspuns replaced by Gautaman shirt, slippers and billowing trousers. Underneath his clothes, he had lost his gaunt shape to muscles like ropes wound tight about his frame. And the way he carried himself, it seemed as though he hardly noticed the four stone pack. He even volunteered to carry Magdalynn’s when she fell ill at the end of the first week.
They were near the peak, then, and nearly empty handed. Ba’al promised them that there was a place they could rest and resupply, a temple built at the highest reach of the mountain. Yet that
was a more than day away at the pace they had been going, and they weren’t going that pace anymore. A blizzard had struck during the dead of the night, and come the next morning, they did not dare venture outside of their tents for fear of losing their way to white wind—their limbs to frostbite. So all that day they spent huddled for warmth, Ba’al on his own and Adam, Magdalynn, and Adnihilo in one tiny canvas tent.
“Growing up in Babylon,” said the pastor’s son, his teeth chattering, “I never understood Kayin’s punishment, when God cursed him and the Hibernis mountains. I didn’t know what it meant to be so cold.” He was talking to the girl, holding her safe from the frigid dirt floor, unsure if she was conscious, for her eyes were closed and her breathing shallow. “I never even saw snow before we came here,” Adam continued. “Does it snow this much back home in Quiet Harbor?”
Magdalynn coughed and shivered in his arms, her nose and freckled cheeks rash pink. It hurt to look at her, just as it did to look upon his friend. Are we still friends, he wondered. He and the half-blood hadn’t spoken more than a handful of words since their argument on the harbor that first Gautaman morning. Since then, so much about him had changed, and there were secrets: how his wounds had healed so quickly and completely, and how he had received the new bruises and scrapes that he brought home at the end of each day during their stay at the chapel. But what bothered Adam the most was the way Adnihilo looked at him with those witch’s eyes—brown and red mottled irises—like he was looking at a monster. Just then, however, his friend’s eyes were closed, his legs crossed, his chest rising and falling to a count of ten. The pastor’s son watched, amazed, as opaque vapor streamed serpentine from the half-blood’s nostrils and lingered in the air longer than the Messah could hold his breath.
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