by Sarah Ash
Acir, left in command of the desert garrison, had often imagined by the watchfires in the dead of the empty desert night, the scenes of rejoicing in Bel’Esstar that greeted the Prince’s restoration to health. Acir had built a gilded picture in his mind from Girim’s letters of a city reborn to faith, a city triumphant. Girim had described how warmly the citizens had welcomed the Guerriors; the streets had been strewn with flowers. Soldiers had begged to leave the Palace Guard to enlist as members of the Commanderie.
‘We shall defend our own,’ Girim wrote, ‘from the infidel and from the unbeliever. Bel’Esstar is a fortress of faith and there we shall build our Stronghold.’
Acir looked around him. Dust blew across the empty street. In the distance he could hear the faint, frenetic chip of metal on stone from the site of the Fortress of Faith.
The gilded city of his desert dreams did not exist, maybe had never existed, he had conjured it from Girim’s letters.
There was no sense of joy – only an all-pervading fear.
The Sanctuary for the Correction and Improvement of Unbelievers had been established in the old Debtors’ Prison on scrubby waste ground to the north of the city.
As Acir approached, he noted the high fences, the watchtowers, the locked gates. He wished he did not have the feeling that Girim had assigned him here as punishment; that he too would have to be forcibly ‘corrected’ from his deviant behaviour. And this dull feeling of dread only increased as he approached the sentries at the gate and saw the look of suspicion in their eyes as his papers were demanded.
‘Please wait in the gatehouse, Captain. I will inform the Governor you have arrived.’
Captain nel Macy, Governor of the Sanctuary, came striding briskly across the courtyard to greet him. He walked with the stiff strut of a seasoned soldier who has survived many campaigns.
‘Captain Korentan! Welcome! Glad to have you with us. Let me show you what we’ve been doing here.’
Beyond nel Macy’s broad shoulders, Acir could see a group of Sanctuarees being herded across the yard; to Acir they looked like convicts, men and women dressed alike in coarse grey tunics and loose trousers.
‘Where are they going?’ he asked.
‘To work on the Fortress. Have you seen it? Isn’t it magnificent?’
‘But I understood the purpose of the Sanctuary was essentially spiritual. Not a labour camp.’
‘Healthy labour, confrère! Nothing better to improve the spirit. Keep the body active in the service of God.’
‘But look at them – exhausted, dispirited.’
One of the Sanctuarees began to cough, a racking, shuddering cough that shook his stooping frame.
‘And ill.’
‘We have a dispensary here,’ nel Macy said defensively.
‘Are you feeding them? They look thin. Wasted.’
‘They get two substantial meals a day.’ Nel Macy stopped. ‘Look, Captain Korentan, is this some kind of Rosecoeur inspection? Be frank with me. I am well aware of your long association with the Grand Maistre.’
‘I am assigned here to join your staff,’ said Acir. ‘That is all.’ So nel Macy suspected him to be an agent of the Rosecoeur; all to the better.
A cry rang out across the yard, a shrill cry of pain and outrage. Acir swung around, hand automatically reaching for the hilt of his sword.
‘Nothing to bother about. They’re just tagging a new inmate.’
‘Tagging him? Like an animal? Why is this necessary?’
‘Identification, confrère. They suffer no more pain than a woman suffers when she has her ears pierced to display her gold and pearl earrings.’ Before Acir could pursue the subject, nel Macy had steered him towards an open doorway, saying, ‘Let me show you the dormitories.’
The dank walls of the old prison had been coated with whitewash but a musty prison smell still lingered. The Governor unlocked a door and showed Acir a bare chamber fitted with bunk beds, six along each side.
‘See? All clean, all functional. Every man has his own sheet and blanket. The Sanctuarees run the laundry. We are self-sufficient here.’
On the far wall, Acir caught sight of a wooden rose, crudely painted crimson and green. The only evidence of the Faith he had seen so far in the Sanctuary.
‘We observe our devotions every morning and every night. Each officer is assigned a different dormitory,’ said the Governor, as though reading Acir’s thoughts. ‘Now – it may happen that one of our charges experiences the desire to convert. He must then undergo a series of spiritual trials. If at the end of this period he is still strong in his convictions, then we open our arms to him and welcome him into the faith.’
‘Does this happen often?’
‘The spiritual trials are, of necessity, rigorous. We have to be certain, Captain. Very certain.’
Acir stood at the barred window of his cell and gazed down into the yard.
How could the dream have turned out like this, in dour prison walls and cowed prisoners, tagged like animals? In the shadow of fear, fear which had settled over the whole city like a chill cloud, which blew through the deserted streets like the cold, dry Fevre wind?
Acir’s faith still burned in his breast, a vision of warmth, of joy, of reconciliation. How had his fellow Guerriors lost their vision, how had they come to perpetrate this atrocity upon their fellow men in the sacred name of Mhir?
‘Do not desert us in our hour of need,’ he whispered, one hand pressed to his breast. Beneath his fingers he felt the Rose graven into his flesh. The physical pain he had endured as the tattooist’s needle pricked out the intricate pattern of petals and thorns was as nothing to the agony of knowing that the cause he followed had wrought so much damage and despair.
The sky is darkening above the Fortress of Faith, a cloud rides fast on the Fevre wind, sweeping in to blot out the sun.
Duststorm – here in Bel’Esstar?
Acir gazes frantically around for somewhere to shelter – but the walls of the Fortress are open to the sky.
Dry particles of dust, grey dust, begin to swirl about the city. Dust stings his face, his upraised hands – cold, ice-cold as stinging hail. The icy dust settles over the city, choking the streets. Soon the whole city will be filled with it, smothered in it, stifled to silence.
Acir staggers into the Fortress, fighting against the gusting Fevre wind to reach the entrance to the Poet-Prophet’s shrine. Drifts of grey snowdust lie across the doorway: he tears at them with his hands, feeling each icy particle sharp as shattered glass. When he looks down at his hands, they are bleeding from a myriad tiny dust-grazes.
At last he tugs open the door and slithers down into the darkness. Dust blows in after him: he puts his shoulder to the door, straining with all his strength to close it. A gust of wind blows it open again, sending showers of dust cascading down into the tomb below.
He throws himself across the tomb, trying to protect it from the encroaching dust with his body. His lacerated hands leave smears of blood across the worn stone.
The tomb shudders.
Acir draws back, terrified.
Something has penetrated the worn stone, and is spearing its way upwards.
A thin branch of green, prickled with black thorns. At its tip a bud unfurls, crimson petals unfold.
A rose. A perfect crimson rose.
The miracle renewed. The sign of divine forgiveness.
The shrine door slams open again and the whirlwind comes tearing in.
‘No!’ he cries aloud, vainly trying to encompass the miraculous Rose in his arms.
The Rose droops in the death-cold blast. Its velvet petals, red as heart’s blood, begin to wither, frostburned.
One by one, the seared petals drop. Even as he watches the fresh green of the branch turns brown – and the dry stick crumbles away.
CHAPTER 17
Clutching her worn canvas bag with her precious notebooks stuffed inside, Dame Jolaine Tradescar crossed the forecourt of the Temple of the Source, all the while
glancing back over her shoulder to see if anyone had followed her.
Inside the Temple, she dipped her handkerchief in the shell of sacred spring water and dabbed the perspiration from her brow.
A curse on the Mayor and his meddling clerks! And, more particularly, a curse on erudite young Dr Philemot. A wicked thought flitted across Jolaine’s mind, a scholar’s revenge. Perhaps she should inscribe her rival’s name backwards on a thin sheet of pewter and cast a curse into the spring as her ancestors had done! Boils. Boils were particularly irksome and unsightly. Yes, boils would do nicely for a start… and maybe a touch of scrofula?
Why couldn’t they have waited a week or two more? Her life’s work was so very nearly complete. And there was no way that her successor was going to snatch it from her now.
She took up her bag and made towards the stair to the Under Temple. A Priest rose up from the shadows to bar her way.
‘You cannot enter the Under Temple today.’
‘Whyever not?’ cried Jolaine, exasperated.
‘It has begun. They must not be disturbed.’
‘What the deuce has begun?’ Why must the Priests always speak in riddles?
‘They are almost ready to be born again into the Light.’
‘The dragonflies!’ Jolaine struck her palm to her temple. The Day of the Dead was approaching – and sooner than she had anticipated. This was a double blow. But there was no way accurately to predict the hatching patterns of dragonflies.
‘And besides, Dame Tradescar,’ the Priest said, ‘there has been some concern expressed in the Temple Court about your excavations.’
‘This is a fine time to start expressing concern!’
‘There have been portents. Warnings.’
‘This is the first I’ve heard of it –’
‘Disturbing the ancient sacred sites. The unravelling of mysteries that are better left unravelled. It must cease.’
‘Portents? Hocus-pocus! A fig to you and your silly superstitions!’ blustered Jolaine. ‘I’m City Antiquarian –I have unlimited access to all the historic sites. I’ll be taking this up with the highest authorities. I’ll go straight to the Mayor!’
The Priest did not budge, his face bland, expressionless.
Fizzling with frustration, Jolaine hefted her bulging canvas bag under her arm and left the Temple.
In the Temple forecourt she sat down on a bench to think. She knew all the hidden ways into the Undercity… but the stelae she wished to reexamine were all located on the rim of the Main Reservoir.
A little boy ran past, scattering breadcrumbs. Soon he was surrounded by an attentive, pecking flock of Temple doves. Jolaine heard the child’s sudden shout of delight as he spotted the bustle about the stalls in the forecourt. Chandlers were setting out trays of scented lotos candles; there were rainbow streamers, dragonfly paper kites, and the traditional striped lotos bonbons, their curved sugar petals flavoured with strawberry, lemon and spearmint.
All in readiness for the Day of the Dead.
‘Dame Tradescar?’
Jolaine looked up, shading her eyes against the morning sun, to try to make out who was addressing her. A young man stood before her, soberly attired, with a plain, pug-like face, rather endearingly ugly.
‘Do I know you, sieur?’
‘I don’t believe we have ever been introduced.’ The young man held out his hand. ‘Theophil Philemot. Of the University of Can Tabrien.’
Jolaine’s manners deserted her. She stared with hostility at the outstretched hand.
‘How did you know to find me here, hm? Did you follow me?’
Dr Philemot slowly let his hand drop; his face had flushed bright red.
‘It must be quite a wrench to relinquish the collection to another curator after so many years, Dame Tradescar. I must say I’d never have guessed you were eighty-one! Taking the waters must keep one youthful –’
‘Relinquish the collection?’ Jolaine interrupted. ‘Maybe I’m a little hard of hearing at my very great age – but did I hear you say I had relinquished the collection?’
‘Why else would I be here?’ Dr Philemot seemed flustered. ‘I was appointed – I understood – as you had retired –’
‘Retired?’
‘See for yourself. My letter of appointment.’ Dr Philemot rummaged in his pockets and brought out a letter which he put into Jolaine’s hands.
‘My dear young man, there has been a mistake. A clerical error. I have most definitely not retired, as you can see. I –’ Jolaine was seized with a sudden apprehension. She grabbed the canvas bag and started off across the Temple forecourt. Dr Philemot followed, moderating his lanky stride to Jolaine’s hobbling pace.
She was puffing for breath by the time she reached the Guildhall steps; halfway up, she could see that she was too late. The blinds were up and her sign had been removed. She fished out her key to unlock the door – and saw the shiny new lock and the pile of sawdust beneath, left by the Guildhall locksmith.
‘Ingrates!’ she cried, hurrying around to the back door. It too sported a new lock. Jolaine sank down on to the doorstep, defeated.
‘I deeply regret –’ began Dr Philemot, and then subsided as she flashed him a look that would have withered a braver man. ‘I will personally ensure that all your possessions are safely packaged up and taken to your lodgings.’
‘My life’s work,’ muttered Jolaine, not listening. ‘Fifty-five years of service to the city – and they throw me out into the gutter like a beggar!’
Jolaine Tradescar gave the Sanatorium bell-pull another vigorous tug.
The peephole in the door shot open and the porter’s eye appeared.
‘We’re closed.’
‘Closed! My dear fellow, it’s two in the afternoon, not two in the morning. Let me in. Tell the good doctor I’m here to see him. It’s urgent.’
‘Like I said – we’re closed.’
‘I’m a family friend. Don’t you know me? Tradescar. Dame Jolaine Tradescar. I’ve two silver courons here for you if you’ll admit me.’
There was a silence, a considering silence. Then Jolaine heard the key turn and a calloused hand appeared, palm turned expectantly upwards. She placed the coins in the upturned palm which instantly shot back out of sight. The door opened.
‘Don’t tell him I let you in,’ the porter said, hastily ushering her into the courtyard.
‘What’s the matter? Why is the place shut up like a tomb, the blinds down? Is there plague? Is someone dead?’
‘It’s his daughter. Taken ill.’
‘Orial?’ Jolaine stopped. ‘Damn it all to hell!’ she muttered. ‘Am I too late, even now?’
‘You all right, Dame Tradescar?’ The porter was staring at her warily. ‘You’ve turned a funny colour.’
‘Just take me to Dr Magelonne,’ Jolaine ordered, her own troubles forgotten.
Cook appeared in the corridor carrying a tray.
‘Tragic,’ she said to Jolaine, shaking her grizzled head. Her eyes were red-rimmed. ‘Just like her poor dear mother. Tragic.’
‘How’s the doctor taking it?’
‘Bad. Very bad. Won’t even touch his food.’
‘Shall I go up?’
Cook gave a shrug, setting the cutlery rattling on the tray.
The stairs seemed steeper than before; Jolaine had to stop and pause for breath several times, clutching on to the polished handrail. At last she reached the top and tottered towards Orial’s room. The door was ajar.
Orial lay on her bed, one arm across her breast, her hair trailing across the white pillows like strands of waterweed.
Jerame Magelonne rose from her bedside and came across to Jolaine. Even in the shadowed room, Jolaine could see the unshaven stubble darkening his face; he had neglected his own needs to stay at her side.
‘The Accidie?’ Jolaine said.
‘I can’t be sure. I’ve sedated her.’ Magelonne spoke in a whisper as though frightened a louder tone might disturb Orial.
�
�Why didn’t you let me know, Jerame? I would have stayed with her. You need rest. I don’t need so much sleep at my age.’
Magelonne beckoned her out on to the landing.
‘What use will you be to her if you fall sick too?’ she said sternly. ‘You must eat, you must sleep. Go to bed – I’ll watch over her.’
‘But –’ Magelonne began to protest but his voice was slurred with tiredness.
‘Go.’
‘I’ll be in my room. You’ll wake me if there’s any change?’ he added anxiously.
‘Yes, yes.’ Jolaine waved him away. ‘Just get some sleep.’
She settled herself in the chair at Orial’s bedside. The girl’s pale skin seemed almost translucent in the darkness – except for the long red weals marring her cheeks.
How Jolaine hated to have the blinds drawn by day; it reminded her of far-distant childhood sickrooms, of fever and bowls of gruel, beef tea and barley water…
‘Mmm…’ Orial murmured in her sleep.
Jolaine leaned over her, listening, watching for any sign of a change. Her pale lips moved, mumbling a word.
‘Ama…’
‘Ama?’ Jolaine repeated out loud, perplexed. What did it mean? Was it a name? Or was it ‘Mama’, was she calling for Iridial?
But Orial did not speak again, drifting back into drugged slumber.
Jolaine raised one of the blinds, took a book from her canvas bag and began to read, moistening her finger-tips as she turned the pages.
‘Tea, Dame Tradescar?’ Cook stood in the doorway.
‘That’s remarkably good of you,’ Jolaine said.
Cook came in and placed the tea-tray on the table beside the bed. All the time, her eyes were on Orial; she softly clicked her tongue in disapproval as she gazed down at her.
‘Poor lamb. She doesn’t even know we’re here.’
‘Cook.’ Jolaine laid down her book. ‘Won’t you join me for tea?’
‘But the doctor–’
‘Is asleep.’
‘I’ll pour then. Can’t stay long. Left the soup simmering on the hob.’ Cook wiped her bony fingers on her apron and poured tea for the two of them. ‘As I recall you like your tea with sliced lemon and two sugars, Dame Tradescar?’