by Ben Blake
be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
Matthew 10: 16
Ten
Highbinder
Once, this had been the city of emperors.
Marks of that time remained, even after centuries. A visitor might pause to admire the triple tiers of arches that carried an aqueduct over a steep, wooded valley just outside the walls, though the aqueduct was broken now and carried no water. He might set aside a day to visit the ruins of the great arena, where captive slaves had once fought and died for the amusement of their masters. Almost certainly he would stop and gape when he came in view of the old walls, around the feet of which houses clustered like a child’s discarded toys. They were among the most massive defences ever built in the world. Every street had its relics, every plaza its memories. In Coristos the past loomed large, always.
Not everything had survived, of course. Massive the old walls might be, but they had been breached once, when the clan army of the Vothar broke into the city. Nobody was sure how, even today. They didn’t leave enough behind them to allow certainty: just rubble, and ashes that smoked through all that autumn, thin grey fingers reaching out of the ruin. Most of the city’s houses had been lost in that fire, and much of its street plan as well. Only the monumental structures remained, echoes of an ancient glory.
The All-Church began to build on the site before the smoke stopped rising. Making a new glory, people said now. An early Hierarch had claimed the Vothar were God’s means, and fire His tool, for the cleansing that would make the site pure enough for the Houses of the Lord.
None of the statues of the emperors had survived. All had been taken away and smashed into dust and rubble, their features lost forever. Once the emperors had claimed to be living gods. Now they were merely dead men with forgotten names, in the city of the One God, who admitted no rival.
Today, the Old City was the preserve of the All-Church. Inside those gigantic walls lay cloisters and monasteries, quiet gardens and arbours, tabernacles, cathedrals and minsters. At the heart of it all, somewhere deep in the network of avenues and boulevards shaded with cypress trees, was the Basilica. Its spires reached higher than any in the city, by force of law, but not so high that they could be seen from outside the walls. Only those judged worthy might look upon the sacred House of the Lord. It was unusual for an outsider, one unconsecrated to the clergy, to be permitted to enter the Old City at all.
Elizur was aware of the honour. He was the first soldier in living memory to walk these streets.
He had to leave his weapons at the Gate, of course. Elizur had expected that – no one could go armed into the city of the Lord, naturally – but it was a surprise to be told he must leave his clothes as well. He didn’t like leaving his surcoat behind. He even wore the crimson cross insignia of the Servants of the Justification when out of uniform, so every man knew to whom he belonged. But the acolytes were quite insistent, and the four men of the Order of the Basilica fixed him with hard eyes when he hesitated. They didn’t frighten him, not a mere quartet of soldiers, but in the end Elizur folded his clothes into a neat pile on his sword. After a moment’s thought he gave the soldiers a significant look and took a pair of bone-backed black gloves from his pack, to lay them atop it all. Two of the men went pale when he did that, and the older of the priests turned his face away.
The clergymen gave him a robe of simple brown wool, belted with a cord, and a pair of sandals. The first itched and the second chafed. They were not what he was used to at all.
“Don’t even dream of touching anything,” he said to the captain of the Order soldiers. “Don’t unsheathe the sword: I’ll know if you do. And I counted the coins I have in my purse.”
The officer’s face darkened, and he smoothed his white and gold tabard with one hand as though to remind Elizur who he was. “The Knights of the Church do not steal, captain.”
Elizur gave the man a thin smile. All-Church soldiers might not steal, but they certainly borrowed, and they rarely remembered what they owed. The Shavelings had changed little since the days when they were made up of thieves and cutthroats, offered the choice of salvation through holy war or death for their crimes. Some of them still were slipfingers, he had little doubt about that. Still, he had only brought a few coppers with him today, enough to buy half a loaf of bread and some butter and honey on his way back. It wasn’t worth the risk for a soldier to borrow from him. And they knew who he was, of course; Elizur’s name had been ticked off in a ledger when he presented himself at the Gate. If nothing else dissuaded them, the sight of those bone-backed gloves certainly ought to. They must know what he would do to a borrower.
“Come,” the oldest acolyte said. He actually tugged on Elizur’s sleeve. “We must not be late.”
“Why not?” he asked lightly. “Will the Lord strike me down for impudence on the spot?”
The second would-be priest blanched at that. Elizur thought he might pass for fifteen, in poor light. The first was closer to twenty, and his lips twitched as though he was trying not to smile. “Perhaps he will, captain. I’d be more concerned about the Arch-Prelate, myself.”
“He is not here,” Elizur said pleasantly. “I am, however. If you lay a hand on me again, boy, I will tear off one of your fingers and force you to eat it knuckle by knuckle, do you understand? Do it a third time and I’ll lay you open from throat to groin and leave you thrashing in the gutter. I hope that is clear to you.”
The acolyte went white, and his lower lip trembled as though his papa had just refused to take him to the circus. If he’d ever known his papa. Elizur sometimes believed that priests hatched their acolytes in some secret place in the Old City, and had them raised as boys by bloodless men who never smiled. At any rate, the boy’s voice was paper thin. “It is, sir.”
“Excellent!” Elizur put on a wide smile. “Shall we go?”
They led him into the Old City.
At first glance it was a disappointment, not much different from the streets outside, save for their emptiness. No people, no mangy dogs slinking close to the walls, no horse dung or waste water that might foul his shoes. Elizur had half-thought there would be angels on every corner and a divine light shining above, though really he knew that was nonsense. Only children really thought of Coristos that way. Still, it was a holy place. Surely something should have changed.
As he walked, he began to realise something had. The avenues were very wide, shaded on both sides by cypresses and date trees, and every building was fronted by an immaculately manicured lawn. It created a sense of space, more like a town park than the heart of a city. But there was more to it than that. Nothing seemed to move here; or if it did, it moved silently, as though fearing to disturb the Lord’s well-earned rest. There was no creak of wagons, no shouting of exasperated drivers or chatter of the multitudes; none of the bustle and noise of a city, in other words. He couldn’t even hear sounds from the New City, outside those ancient walls. It was eerie, more like a dream than the real world.
An occasional priest or acolyte passed by, and they did so noiselessly, except for soft-murmured chanting and the patter of sandals. They seemed not even to see the three men walking towards the centre.
No, that wasn’t it either, though it made Elizur’s city-bred fingers twitch. There was… something else.
Elizur wasn’t sure what it might be, but he felt it in his flesh and bones, and in his soul. Sanctity reached into every corner here, suffused the air, drifted into a man’s spirit as he breathed. Over long ages it had seeped into the stones themselves, which now leaked it back into the world at large. It was indefinable… but it was there. Here Heaven drew close to the world, and God was watching. To carry a sword here, or to wear everyday clothes, would be almost heretical.
He thought about asking the acolytes whether they might stop to pray, which the Arch-Prelate who had summoned him surely would not object to. In the end he decided not to. Anything he might say would be meaningless in the face of this. He was only a soldier, after all:
an extremely good one, and as watchful a warden of the Lord’s word as he could find it in himself to be, but still just a soldier. Later he could visit a chapel outside the walls and spend an hour in prayer, offering thanks for the gift of this experience, but not now.
There were no inns and taverns, no shops or dwellings, though sense told him the clergy had to sleep and eat somewhere. After a while Elizur began to think he was passing the same stretch of road he’d walked before, though that couldn’t be, since he had turned neither right nor left since leaving the Gate. It was just that one minster looked very like another when you’d already seen a hundred today, or felt as though you had. He wondered if there might be something faintly blasphemous in that thought.
We have turned neither right nor left. That raised an interesting possibility, and Elizur raised an eyebrow at the older of the acolytes. “Am I to go to the Basilica itself, then?”
“Maker’s Mercy, no!” The lad made a circle with thumb and forefinger, an ancient invocation of the God. “My instructions are to take you to the Tabernacle of the Redemption. It almost faces the Basilica.”
“You will be permitted to look upon the Basilica,” the younger priest said in a squeaky voice. Trying to sound authoritative, Elizur thought, but he was too callow to carry it off.
Elizur put on his best smile, with lots of teeth. “Don’t be frightened, little man. I won’t eat you.”
The youth nodded and kept his head down. Wise of him.
They knew who he was, of course. Half of God’s world knew of Elizur Mandain. Infidels quaked at the mere name. The higher clerics probably put their noses in the air and sniffed when they heard it though, so Elizur thought these two boys might have done something wrong and been given the duty of escorting him as punishment. Or maybe not: some among the acolytes would admire Elizur’s deeds, and might have tried to wheedle their way into meeting him. A number of these men were the leftover sons of nobility, after all, prodded into the priesthood by their fathers when they would much rather have chosen life as a mercenary or Crusader.
He doubted these two were that sort though. Neither appeared comfortable with him, or excited, or even the least bit interested. Maybe both boys had entered the clergy through a true sense of faith. Such things did happen, though not as often as the All-Church liked to claim. If so, then their interests lay in prayer and ritual, the unchanging daily routine of serving God. For such men that meant the comfort of a haven from the real world. They would have little interest in the soldiers who fought to preserve their tranquillity.
Elizur hoped the Gate guards weren’t fiddling with his gear. If they did he’d know as soon as he laid hands on his gloves, and they would pay for it, somehow. Especially if they touched his sword. It wasn’t done to simply murder a Church soldier, but a way could always be found.
Presently the acolytes turned towards a wide path of dressed stone, leading up to a building of reddish granite. Flying buttresses flanked a high doorway, above which a carved man stood bathed in light, one hand raised in benediction to an unseen throng.
“You told me I would see the Basilica,” Elizur said.
The older acolyte stopped and pointed. “There. Just to the left of the date tree on the corner.”
Elizur could just make out the edge of a building, made of the same red stone as the Tabernacle before him. He grunted to himself. Almost faces the Basilica, indeed. These boys had been playing a game with him, like shysters at a travelling fair when a country lout strolls up to their pavilion. His cheek twitched. Perhaps a way could be found for them as well.
“Show me to this Arch-Prelate,” he said.
The two youths blinked at him with identical expressions of distress. They must have expected him to fall on his knees and give thanks for the honour of laying eyes on the great Basilica, even one meagre corner of it. Elizur had to push the younger of them before they moved on up the path.
As they reached the steps someone emerged from the doors above, dressed in the white robes of a priest.
“You are late, my son,” he said in forbidding tones. He was old, surely nearing seventy, with scrawny grey hair that clung around his head like weak grass on the side of a cliff. But his voice… that was what the squeaky young acolyte wanted to sound like, one day. The man boomed, even in the open air. He would intimidate most men with one word, Elizur thought.
He shrugged, showing he was not most men. “I didn’t know my way. I could only come as fast as these boys could guide me.”
The basilisk glare turned to the acolytes. “You have been lax, have you? Very well. You will go to the Chapel of Penance and tell the Master what you have done. You will go now.”
The boys murmured assent as they bowed, and departed. Neither so much as looked at Elizur. He started to climb the steps.
“I am Arch-Prelate Sarul,” the priest said as Elizur reached the top. “And you are Elizur Mandain, of the Justified, or you had better be.” He looked the soldier up and down with what might have been a faint sneer. “Somehow I thought you would be bigger.”
“I am as big as I need to be,” he said stiffly. He didn’t like the diminutive name for his order, Justified, always spoken with a faintly supercilious undertone. He really didn’t like to be reminded of his height. “A lot of men expected me to be taller, or broader in the shoulders. Most of them are dead.”
“Most are,” Sarul said indifferently. “Not all.”
Elizur’s cheek twitched. “There is time, yet.”
“Then we should not waste it,” Sarul said. He beckoned Elizur with one hand as he turned back towards the Tabernacle.
Inside it was large and extravagantly ornate. A lone, eight-armed candelabrum lit the far end of the large chamber, and Elizur was glad that was all. Any more light and he would have been blinded in the presence of so much silver and gold. Even the backs of the pews bore gold leaf, traced with intricate patterns. This temple was never meant to be used, he realised. Elizur had seen certain wealthy nobles carry swords with ivory handles and scroll-worked blades, toys meant for show and not for battle. This tabernacle was the same, a visible ornament, and a reminder of the wealth and power of the All-Church. As though anyone who came here would need reminding of that. It was ostentation, pure and simple, and Elizur tried not to let his lip curl.
Two men waited by the candelabrum, seated in large armchairs that nearly concealed them. Elizur could see they wore the same white robes as Sarul, though. Arch-Prelates, then, and whatever brought three of them together to meet a soldier inside the Old City itself, it was sure to be important. Elizur smiled. He liked to feel important.
He went to meet them with a joyful heart.