It took a moment for Efrain to actually understand what it was he saw. Two figures, the first swept forward into the light, revealing a young face, pale dirt-stained robes, and bright red hair. The second was a mottled skeleton, lumbering forward with a slow gait. One moment of intrigue led to disappointment as the skeleton collapsed into a barely moving pile.
“That’s just insulting,” Efrain sneered, and with a wave of the hand, stopped any additional locomotion.
Sorore’s eyes were downcast as she carefully worked around the bones. Lillian looked behind her, parked her hand on one of her hips, and glared.
“You were supposed to stay at the church, under the watch of Niche,” she said, “not come down and wander dangerous places.”
The girl offered several apologies, which were only half-accepted, and only with additional reprimands.
“There’s nothing for it,” she said, “you’ll have to stay with us. But don’t think of that as a reward for your behaviour. Wandering in places like this can get you killed.”
Sorore came to the back of the paladin, and stared down at the pile of bones fearfully.
“You know, I’d be inclined to agree,” said Efrain, thinking of the traps in his own castle, “although it won’t be by this shoddy craftsmanship.”
He knelt to pick up the bones, and tossed them away in disinterest.
“What is it?” said Lillian, still holding the dagger by her side, arms tense with anticipation.
“No need to worry, paladin, whatever magic was holding it together is gone now,” he said, “it was quite sloppy, actually.”
“What does that mean?” said the girl, barely above a whisper, “I saw the torch light, and was about to reach you when this… thing came out from the side passage.”
“It’s simple,” he said, picking up one of the aged funeral wrappings, “take a look.”
“Aged cloth?” said Lillian, wrinkling her nose.
“Precisely. Used to bind the dead, presumably in these very catacombs. Your priests might’ve missed one or two of the corpses. Maybe they were buried in the sand. Either way, this is an old body, interred over a century ago now.”
“And you said it’s gone now?” she said, the knife relaxing just slightly.
“Indeed. The magic propelling it wouldn’t even be enough to hurt the young lady, save a bruise or two when it crashed into her. It’s sloppy, slapdash, probably so old that almost nothing of the original enchantment exists anymore.”
That was the more likely explanation, he thought, and yet… even though the body and wrappings were indeed old, the magic felt off. Old magic, especially one that had been setting for years had a ‘dusty’ quality to it, as if magic flaked off and settled around the enchanted object, only to be disturbed when suddenly roused. This smelled, perhaps not fresh, but certainly not as ancient as the body would suggest.
“Maybe it was meant to scare off grave robbers who disturbed the bodies laid to rest. It would certainly be alarming, to see the remains you covet suddenly spring to life like that.”
“A guard?” said Lillian.
She seemed genuinely curious, though if that was simply her learning about a potential future enemy, or something more, Efrain couldn’t tell.
“Probably not,” Efrain said, “the castle was inhabited before - the tombs would’ve had their own keepers. Living ones, I mean.”
“So why was it attacking us?” she said, “we weren’t anywhere near it.”
“We are near that,” he said, gesturing to the wall of black stone before them, “perhaps a mechanism to protect a vault or treasure, or a particularly important person’s grave. A grave of the castle lords?”
Efrain rubbed his mask as he looked up at the impassible stone, and wondered about what just lay beyond, and the coldness that echoed out. What had happened here? Had it always been like this, a cursed room in a long held-castle? Or was it something relatively new? He didn’t have the information he needed to make any such conclusion. Perhaps one of the villagers would know, or at least have heard something that might offer a kernel of truth.
Efrain stood up and sighed, brushing off the bottom of his cloak.
“Well, there’s nothing for us down here, I don’t think,” he said, “if you don’t know what this is, probably only the priest did, and he might be beyond our reach. Now, we should ret-”
He had stopped, much to Lillian’s confusion, and was staring past her to where the young girl was resting her head on the stone, murmuring to herself. Efrain said nothing as he watched her, eyes shut, resting her weight on her palms.
“My lady?” Lillian said, “what are you doing?”
Sorore didn’t respond at first, but peeled herself away from the wall and rubbed the surface.
“There’s something in the stone,” she said, “something that whispers. Memory, I think.”
Efrain was very interested all of a sudden as he walked closer.
“You can feel it? Hear it?” he said, cocking his head as he considered the young face anew.
The girl nodded, but screwed up her features in frustration.
“Distantly, not close enough to make anything out,” she complained, “it’s too murky.”
Efrain stood and thought for a moment as he gazed up at the height of the wall.
“Maybe,” he said, “but the key is not to listen, but to reach out.”
“What?” said Sorore.
“Don’t just listen to the stone, talk to it - prompt its response so that it’s speaking to you,” he said.
She, with obvious uncertainty, placed her hands back onto the stone, and looked up at Efrain.
“Now what?”
Efrain looked at Lillian, who looked decidedly less than comfortable. He moved to be on her side - maybe that would encourage her to be calm if he was in striking distance.
“Lay your head on the stone, listen to it as you were just doing,” he said.
The girl did just that, Efrain staying studiously back to avoid the wrath of Lillian. He could feel the magic flowing between them, between the stones, mixing together and returning to the earth. To be sure, it wasn’t much, and not very perceptible, but it was there.
“Now,” he said, “imagine, in the distance. There’s a bonfire, people are sitting around it.”
The girl nodded, eyes still shut as she focused.
“They’re talking, but you can’t make out the words, not quite yet,” he said, “go forward, reach out to them, call them.”
He could see the ghostly imposition of the girl’s images on his own mind, the fire in the darkness, faceless fuzzy humanoids talking and chatting in an incomprehensible murmur.
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“That’s it,” he said, hearing Sorore’s own voice joining the dialogue, stringing some of the heads of the ‘people’. They turned as the scene grew looser and the knowledge that was graven into the stones began to trickle outward. Fleeting impressions became hard knowledge.
Efrain and Sorore stood there for a while, until the flow went from a dribble to nothing. She pulled back from the door, and he took his hand off her shoulder. When she turned around, her eyes were bright with excitement.
“So, what did we learn?” Efrain said, with more ‘teacher’ in his voice than he intended.
“The stones, they…” Sorore said, placing an almost loving hand on the wall, “they remember.”
“Most objects made with magic have that impression of memory. Magic is linked with it, and is woven into the material.”
“It’s an entrance, or at least, it was,” she said, spreading her fingers across the sword, feeling for some gap or pittance, “there was a seam here, somewhere, between the two doors but it’s gone.”
Efrain nodded, it was the impression that he had gotten as well. Now he was certain that there was something behind the door, something of value.
“But the stone was meant to close over like this,” Sorore continued, “it's what it was made for, to be joined. It’s where it wants to be.”
Efrain would’ve arched an eyebrow - he’d thought he’d picked something like that up, but it had been too indistinct to be sure of. It seemed however, that the girl was quite certain of this, and he had no real reason to disagree.
“But how was it-” he wondered aloud.
“A tool,” she said, with an astonished giggle, “they remember, something sharp, something that struck into them and spread them apart, and then pressed them together, like, like…”
She snapped her fingers, trying to express whatever sensation she had felt.
“Like when you’re sewing, and have all the needlework in place, and you pull, and the two edges come together from the start of the stitch.”
Now that was interesting - Efrain hadn’t gotten that ‘memory’ but the conviction that Sorore felt left little room for argument.
“So, we’re missing a tool, presumably the same one that made the walls outside seamless. It must be quite the old tool, considering that these walls have been here for at least centuries.”
He turned to Lillian, who was clearly unhappy with what had taken place, but had not struck him, or tried to intercede.
“Do you know of any heirloom, any artefact, some sort of legend about a magical or unnatural object in this land?”
Lillian took a moment to think, and shook her head.
“Well, then, perhaps one of the villagers would know,” he said, turning toward the stair, “well done, little miss.”
Sorore’s face lit up with pride and satisfaction, apparently forgetting or not realising that she had both fraternised with a mage and had done magic herself, neither of which was palatable to church doctrine. Either way, what was done was done, and now Efrain was one step closer to the truth that had so far eluded him.
The three of them made their way up and back through the various passages of the catacombs, making sure that none of the side passages were occupied by unalive guests. It seemed that the encounter was only a one-off, however, and they wound their way up through the stairs and out into the church without difficulty.
Sorore was escorted away from Efrain with a stern look by Lillian towards the altar. He was left alone in the tide of people that were hurrying about. The great bulk of them seemed to be arranging and stacking the pews such that they formed a barricade in the centre of the church, under the supervision of the more experienced knights.
Efrain was wondering who exactly he was going to start with, when he noticed that the knight Damafelce and Aya emerged from the side door, along with Innie. The cat made her way directly towards him, in a way that suggested that there was some news to share. He leaned against one of the columns as she curled up beside him.
For a moment, there was silence, and when she finally spoke, any hint of her sardonicism vanished.
“We found a ghost upon the roof,” she said, quietly.
“You did?” he said, “did it say anything?”
The attempt at humour was not acknowledged.
“It wasn’t even a proper ghost, it was fragmented,” she said, “the merest echo of an echo.”
“Did you at least get memory out of it?” he said, waiting for her to get to the point.
“I didn’t. It was so faint, nothing was even remotely cohesive. But the girl Efrain, the girl!”
He listened a bit more intently, assuming that this was in reference to Aya.
“What did she do?”
“She could see it, when I would’ve ignored it as some random aberration,” she said, something approaching awe, “and it was just a jumble of random thoughts and feelings, nothing even I could get a fix on.”
Efrain waited for her to finish, his thoughts of investigation thoroughly disrupted.
“She touched it, just touched it, and it fell into place. All the chaos, all the magic, just oriented like that.”
There was a snap of a spark, presumably her attempt at recreating the sound of a finger snapping.
“And I could see her, a young, young child, not even ten. I could feel her confusion, her grief, her pain. As clear as stone at the edge of a pool.”
Efrain hmmed as he processed the information. First that skeleton, now a wayward ghost? Something was creating undead, the question was whether there was true intent behind it, and if so, what was it? An inadvertent call for help? A last desire before the end, thrown out into the world?
Something cool began to wrap its way around his heart as he thought about it, and his excited curiosity began to be tinged with dread. He relayed the story of the catacombs and all he had learned with the girl.
“Rendering spirits into clarity, seeing strange visions, listening to the memory of stone, with no training and not even fully grown,” she said, shaking her head, “they’re doing this all instinctively.”
“Makes you wonder if the church has a point,” he said, getting a grim chuckle in response.
“What is happening to the world, Efrain?” she said, “these filthy things wandering our valleys. Spirits grow restless in the presence of mere children. That thing on the Green Road. Children who can wield magic almost as well as you can with no experience.”
“Hey,” he protested.
“Alright, not as well as you can. You know what I meant,” she said, shaking a small cloud of sparks from her coat.
“We can worry about that if we get out of here alive,” he said, “magic is dampened, and I strongly believe whatever is behind that damn door that’s causing it.”
Innie nodded in agreement.
“So, we need to find that tool,” Efrain said, “the one in the stone’s memory, so we can open that door. The question is, where?”
Innie twitched her tail pensively as she thought.
“Could it have been destroyed by the church?” she said.
“Possibly,” Efrain shrugged, looking around half-heartedly to see a cabinet or chest somewhere. There was none.
“But that would get us back down to square one,” she said, “so lets go off the hopeful assumption that it was kept.”
“It probably was an heirloom from the old houses that lived here, used for the black stone,” he said, “so the church found it in the ruins.”
“Taken back to Angorrah?” she said.
“Possibly, but…” he said, “they mentioned something about a fortress. I don’t recall a fortress in the Alonshaze, do you?”
Innie performed the feline equivalent of a shrug.
“I wouldn’t know. This is well south of my lands.”
Efrain was fairly certain that it was the case, which was its own concern, but that was aside from the point.
“And yet, the stones were split only so long ago,” he said, “at least, that was the impression both I and the girl got.”
“So, they had it till recently,” Innie said, “they wouldn’t have given it to the troop when they passed through? No, you said the paladin didn’t know any stories about it.”
“Unless she’s lying. But I don’t think that’s the case.”
“They’re known for being frustratingly honest in my limited experience,” Innie said dryly.
“She has no real reason to lie,” he said, “what would she think I’m going to do with it that I couldn’t do already? And why would she have any interest in a magical artefact kept in a local church. Even if she could figure out how to use it, it’s a tool not a weapon.”
He left the thought out that the paladin might not be as blockheaded as this argument was assuming.
“Then, what, the local priest kept it a secret? From church agents?” she said, “that would’ve taken some balls.”
The crass expression was unusually from Innie to the point that Efrain actually laughed aloud. That earned him more than a few odd glances from the working men and women. Efrain and Innie stood silent for a few minutes as they considered the possibilities.
“So… we had a magical tool, we assume was retrieved from the formal castle owners, and was used as recently as a few months ago,” he said, “but there’s no trace of it now that we know of, and there’s a strong possibility that it was kept secret from the company for some reason.”
“We need to find that local priest,” said Innie, “he’s the one that would know.”
“Or perhaps, one of the church workers would, if they’re any,” he said, looking around at the workers.
He spied out Damafelce, who was talking to two of the other captains, and came to her. All three looked up at him as he halted short and gestured to the people around them.
“My apologies for interrupting, captain,” he said, “but, if you can spare the time, I would like to seek out any of the former church workers. I have some questions about the structure and history of it that might prove helpful.”
“Very well, do what you think is necessary,” she said, “just don’t interrupt the work being done, if you please. Now, I must be excused - time is limited.”
With a ‘my lady’ and a nod to Innie, she turned on her heel, and walked briskly away with the other captains.
“Well, someone’s been getting comfortable with you,” he said, watching as Innie’s eyes glowed warmly.
“The first one with any courtesy and common sense in this place,” she said, “I like her.”
“So do I,” he said/
It didn’t take long before he had managed to section off a handful of villagers who might’ve had connections to the church. Most were uninteresting, merely occasional helpers or people who stayed after preaching more often than not. While they offered little in the way of useful information, they pointed Efrain to some people that did.
It was the elderly man who claimed to be the gardener for the church who held the most interest for Efrain. The villager seemed unnerved by Efrain’s appearance, which he thought was good - it might prompt more honesty, especially if the man was asked uncomfortable questions.
“Right, sir. What’re you asking me?” he said, fidgeting in front of Efrain’s gaze.
Efrain took a long look at the weathered, tanned face and the calloused hands with their wiry strength.
“First of all, your name, if you please,” he said.
The elderly man seemed surprised by the show of courtesy, but he answered.
“Mordred. If it pleases you,” he added quickly.
“Well, now, master Modred,” Efrain said, “how long have you been gardening in this church?”
“Since I was very young, lord,” he said, “my father handed the trade down to me.”
Now that might be very good indeed, Efrain thought as he relaxed back into the pillar.
“Have you heard, Modred, of any story, any tale, even a mere rumour, of something in this place. Probably something that the church kept, probably secret? An object, some kind of artefact or heirloom from long ago, when this place was a castle?”
“This place was a castle?” he said, eyes lighting up, “my mum and gran always said so. Many weren’t sure.”
“You know the grounds better than most,” Efrain said impassively, “you can see the foundations, which you, or your father perhaps, repurposed into some quite impressive beds.”
The man’s chest puffed out, even as his face furrowed in concentration.
“He said it was always one of his better ideas. Waste not want not, and all that. But…” he said, combing through his memory, “I’m sorry my lord, I don’t recall anything of that sort.”
“Are you certain? We think it was some kind of tool for shaping the black stone. No? Nothing? Well,” Efrain said, thinking for a moment, “Perhaps we should ask a different question. Did anything happen a couple months ago, near or at the church? Anything… unusual.”
Efrain thought it was merely a stab in the dark, but the way the man flitted, suddenly growing even more apprehensive, lit in him a spark of hope.
“Well, there was the…” Mordred, before shaking his head, “I’m sorry my lord. I swore not to speak about it, but I can tell you who would know about it. There’s Blutarch, the deacon, the one they call ‘priest’ now, and there’s poor old Maise and Jove. Poor souls.”
Efrain mulled it over, thinking of the vanishment of this ‘priest’ as another puzzle piece fell into place.
“If you would be so kind,” he said, before quickly adding, “and they won’t be in any trouble, I assure you. Tell me where I can find this Maisie or Jove.”