Above the streets of Garihelm, the bells of Myrr Arthor tolled a mournful song. A dirge well matched to the weeping sky. Across the city, more bells answered the call of the great seat of the Faith, until all the streets, the towers, the storm walls and manor rows echoed with the clamor.
I thought perhaps the sound passed into the pouring sky above, out over the churning waters of the bay, and were taken in by them.
Lias had once told me that the world’s water is caught in an endless cycle. It evaporates from the surface, rising into the sky only to fall again as rain. Sometimes I wondered if all the world’s pain worked in a similar loop, seeping into the soil and the water only to return unchanged, echoing itself down into forever. Only, sorrow and pain are cumulative, added to by every new injury done until life had room for little else.
The sky took in our suffering, and gave it back to us tenfold. It gave us storms, and flooding rains, and cold. It gave us monsters who wielded blades of lightning.
Did the gods not care? Did God not care?
I would have my answers.
“Are you ready?” A soft voice asked me.
I stood at the window of an outer tower of the Bell Ward, my gaze fixed on the spires of the city’s grandest cathedral. I wore a thick cloak of brown wool against the chill of the latest rain, the hood up to conceal my face, the front clasped by rope. I would look little different from what the monks and lesser clericons who tended to the houses of the clergy wore.
I turned to the figure who stepped into the small room where I’d been waiting. Lisette wore an outfit similar to mine, her black priorguard uniform hidden or exchanged. The face beneath the tightly bound cowl stared at me with calm blue eyes.
“I am,” I said.
The spy nodded. “The rector is ready for you.”
I cast a final look at the high towers of the cathedral, and the brooding sky above it, before following her from the room.
Lisette took me down to the courtyard. A shape detached itself from the store tower’s entry and joined us. Emma gave me a brief nod.
“Lots of people about,” Emma muttered. “I doubt the Priory will make a fuss, not after that fiasco the other night. I’ve been listening to word on the streets, and apparently they’re facing a full investigation from the Church at large at the insistence of the nobility. Still, best we be cautious and not cause a fuss.”
“A fuss?” Lisette asked, her voice dark. “You call what happened that night a fuss? Nearly forty people died, either during your skirmish with the priorguard or from that monster.”
Emma cast a lazy eye at the other girl and said nothing.
“Let’s not give them any reason to start anything,” I said. “Keep moving and act like you’re supposed to be here. If we get into a situation, let Lisette do the talking.”
“Right,” Emma scoffed, not bothering to hide her doubt as she glanced at the cleric. “Because she’s so trustworthy, the spy.”
Lisette’s pale complexion darkened with an angry blush. “I saved his life!”
“And put him into danger in the first place,” Emma reminded her primly.
“Peace,” I told them both. “This isn’t the time. And I do trust her,” I said, looking at my squire. “Because Her Grace does.”
Emma caught my look, and her aristocratic features shifted into neutrality. “Very well, but don’t say I didn’t warn you if she ends up trying to keep her cover at our expense.”
Lisette started to riposte, but I caught her attention and nodded toward the towering cathedral. She sighed and motioned for us to follow.
Even in bad weather, Garihelm bustled with activity and the Bell Ward was no exception. All branches of the Aureate Church were represented in the Reynish capital. The Clericon College, the council of high clergy who governed the Faith, met in the city under the arbitration of the Synod, the neutral faction which maintained ties between the Church’s various institutions.
The Church had never been a unified force. Across the land, insular sects had dominated through most of our history. Though certain pillars of the Faith, such as the Priory of the Arda and the Abbey of St. Layne, had become more dominant in recent generations, there remained many voices among the God-Queen’s servants.
I saw white-and-yellow-robed clerics of the Abbey. I spotted the red-robes of the Priory as well, and those eyes I avoided. They intermingled with the humble brown of monks belonging to the mendicant orders, who were as numerous and disparate as mercenary companies in the Edaean marchlands. I caught flashes of pale green and blue where Triquetric priestesses walked, furtive and unreal as the nymphs said to have founded their orders.
I passed a group of lay sisters in the white and black of the Cenocastia, and I felt a sharp pang in my chest. I avoided their eyes. I knew the accusation I saw in them was only in my head, but I felt it nonetheless.
In the distant fog, I could see Rose Malin looming amid the sprawl of churches and bureaucratic buildings, threatening in its unassuming veneer.
Lisette marched with purpose. I did note some priorguard about in the daylight, mostly guarding the crimson robed Priory clericons, but our guide seemed unconcerned.
We hadn’t spoken much since she’d rescued me from Oraise’s holding facility. I knew the young adept worked for Rosanna, but the circumstances of how that had come to be remained a mystery to me. What had happened to Olliard, the old doctor who’d moonlighted as a monster hunter? Why had they separated, and what had brought Lisette into the service of the Empress?
I had enough on my mind that I didn’t bother asking.
As we entered the shadow of the great basilica and came under the watchful eyes of its gargoyles, dormant now in midday, Lisette led us into a side passage rather than the main doors. We went deep into the bowels of that place, navigating a winding series of hallways echoing with the furtive whispers of the faithful, and eventually entered a small chapel. A private space, satellite to the great congregational halls I knew the enormous cathedral also housed.
The walls were all of deep gray stone, the pillars covered in bass reliefs telling the long story of the Faith. These radiated out from the pillars like rivers of history, their origin untraceable but all terminating in a great image on the far wall, of the Heir of Onsolem raising aloft a blazing spear from which a horde of demons flinched. The Holy Auremark blazed like a banner behind that spear, worked into stone with gold.
Emma wandered the pews, staring at everything with a bemused expression. She’d never been much impressed by the divine. I suppose, when your godmother is a fallen angel and you are told your entire life that you are unloved by God for the crimes of your ancestors, it does not engender much zeal.
Lisette spoke to a young aide wearing the unbroken white of a synodite, then returned to stand at my side. She followed my gaze to the mural. We both stared a while, content in our own thoughts.
“I should apologize to you,” Lisette said, breaking the quiet.
“Oh?” I folded my arms beneath my cloak. “Why’s that?”
“I bound you up and left you in a dangerous position twice,” the young adept said, her voice troubled. For someone with such a dangerous magic, I’d noted she had a nervous disposition. “And yet, I feel we should have been allies.”
I shrugged. “Don’t let Emma get to you. She doesn’t really trust anyone.” Especially not priests, I added silently.
Lisette cast a nervous glance at the lean noble. “It’s not just that. I saw you fight that thing in the Presider’s dungeons, and…” She took a deep breath, as though to armor her nerves. “I heard what it called you.”
I thought back, and remembered. “Ah.”
It had called me Alder Knight, right in front of Lisette and the old changeling we’d rescued. I hadn’t even thought about it at the time.
“You were a holy knight,” Lisette said, glancing at me beneath her hood. “Elf-blessed. One of the protectors of the golden country.”
I shrugged. “Some might say.”
“Your order betrayed us. They were Recusant.”
I didn’t hear any accusation in her tone. Just a question.
“Do you think I’m Recusant?” I asked.
She thought about it a moment. “No. But… Olliard told me about the Knights of the Alder Table, once. He said they were great heroes, a banner of hope for this land. When they betrayed the realms, it hurt us badly. Our spirit.”
She fixed her blue eyes on me more firmly. “What are you fighting for, Alken? Redemption?”
I scoffed. “Redemption. What will that change? What will it fix?”
She didn’t have an answer to that, though her expression became more troubled.
“What about you?” I asked, changing the subject. “How’d you end up with the Empress, anyway? Or is that confidential?”
Lisette shook her head. “After Master Olliard and I separated, I felt lost. I returned to the order which had raised me — the Abbey. The convent who took me in after my parents died were members. I went to them, and they helped me complete my training. I did a service for Her Grace, and she took me into her household.”
“And this business with the priorguard?” I asked. “You’re young for a spy. How old are you, anyway?”
Lisette blushed. “That is not a gentlemanly question.”
“I’ve never been a gentleman,” I said. “Even when I was a knight.”
Lisette’s jaw tightened. “I am twenty. And I infiltrated the priorguard because my technique was of great value to them, which made it easy to get in and prove my worth. Her Grace simply didn’t have anyone better for the task, so it was an easy choice.”
Somehow, I doubted it had been as easy as she made it out to be.
“That is a strong Art,” I agreed. “Where’d you learn how to wield those threads, anyway?”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The young woman fell quite a minute or so. Then in a sadder voice she said, “Our abbess. She was like a mother to me. She taught us how to weave the golden threads to heal, but Olliard encouraged me to find other uses for it. Binding, trapping, cutting… He always believed that some sickness needs to be tended, and some cauterized.”
I remembered Olliard telling me that Lisette’s monastery had been destroyed by bandits before he found her. I recognized the loss in her words, and didn’t push her for more information.
Emma, however, had no such tact. She approached and said, “Are you two done flirting? There’s a man there trying to get your attention.”
Lisette’s blush returned. She seemed to blush very easily, mostly in anger. “We weren’t—”
“Preoster,” I said, bowing to the old man who approached once Emma had drawn his attention. Lisette fell quiet, shooting a furious glare at my squire, who studiously ignored her.
The newcomer dressed in the white of the Synod, though his flowing robes were trimmed in gold. He was near dark of skin as the Lady Laessa, bent with age, had rheumy eyes, and no circlet of office or veil on his brow. His wispy hair hung about his head like the dregs of a vanished cloud.
I also noted a very faint light in his half-blind eyes, like a faint reflection of star or moonlight. An adept, and a strong one. A starcanter.
I reached up to remove my cowl and bowed my head. Lisette also bowed, much lower than I. Emma just stood back with her typical poised disinterest.
“Hm…” the old man peered up at my face. I practically towered over him. I fought the urge to shift uncomfortably, sensing his seemingly blind eyes saw through me somehow, or beyond me. “You are the one Her Grace spoke of, Ser?
My discomfort took on a different quality. “Not a Ser, father. I don’t have that honor. My name is Alken.”
The old priest hm’d again. “I am told you wish to perform a rite of communion. This is a rare request. You understand, yes?”
The old man had an odd cadence, speaking each word like a step in a stilted dance.
“I understand,” I said. “It won’t be my first time.”
The old cleric blinked. Communion was an ancient rite, and usually reserved for kings and high priests seeking council on matters of great import. Knights who undertook quests of serious consequence were also known to undergo it.
The synodite stepped closer. His liver-spotted hands emerged from his sleeves and clasped together, though it didn’t stop a slight tremble — I suspected age rather than emotion. His nose came level with my sternum. He peered up into my face, and it was an effort not to fidget under the pressure of those ethereal eyes.
He looked into mine, and I knew he could see a similar radiance in them.
“Ah!” The old man stepped back, as though burned. He coughed, and then laughed. “So that’s how it is!” He kept laughing, only stopping when another fit of coughing overtook him. “You’ve had a long road, no doubt. Lisette, thank you for bringing this one to me. I see why Her Grace wished for me to facilitate this.”
Lisette murmured to me. “Father Alaric is well trusted by the Empress. He was also a member of the Abbey before joining the Synod. He is rector to this house of God.”
Alaric waved a gnarled hand. “I dislike engaging in factionalism, but I am happy to be of service to Rosanna Silvering. She is a soul of steel. Also, she keeps a very good cupboard.”
He let out his coughing laugh again.
I inclined my head to the old man, only mildly surprised. “You know who I am?”
Father Alaric shrugged. “I know what you are. The rest does not concern me.”
He turned and gestured for me to follow. “Please, this way. These young ladies will need to wait here. What comes next is for you alone.”
Lisette bowed to the clericon, accepting this easily. Emma cast me a doubtful look.
“Keep watch,” I told her. “I’ll be back shortly.”
She blew out a breath and adjusted a lock of dark hair. “I feel like I’ve heard that one before.”
----------------------------------------
I followed the cleric through the cathedral. We ascended many steps. Eventually we entered the uppermost chamber of a lone-standing tower. A domed ceiling rose above the room, set with rows of glass between hard stone. The floor was a clear, circular space set with intricate mosaic, and the walls were carved with shallow reliefs of saintly figures looking inward, their hands clasped in prayer.
I felt a shiver as I entered the chamber, sensing its ritual purpose. This was another chapel, of sorts, and one of a kind I had seen before.
I’d given confession before. As a Knight of the Alder I had done it with this very level of ritualistic melodrama. I had also done it in private moments, and with...
I pushed her name from my thoughts. It would do me no good here.
I stopped when I stood at the very center of the tower chamber, in a blank circle within the twisting vines of the mosaic set in the floor. With a start I realized I recognized the design around me — gold and silver branches twisting outward, radiating from a central circle. The circle represented the severed trunk of a tree, seen from above. I knew it. I hadn’t thought to see it here, so far from Seydis. I looked at the old man and couldn’t keep the note of accusation from my voice.
“This room… This is an Alder Round.” I knew I was right as soon as I said it. It wasn’t the great chamber from the old capital, but it did evoke it.
“This tower was made for your order when it still graced these shores, yes.” The old man had lifted a veil over his head, very much like the cowl and rectangular mask of cloth the priorguard wore, with a circlet of rose gold to secure both in place. Only, his was white. “It was made by human hands, not elven, but many of the True Knights have stood here and offered themselves to the eyes of the divine through the centuries.”
“The order’s disbanded,” I said, wary. “Excommunicated.”
“And yet you came here,” Alaric said, a note of amusement in his scratchy voice. “Knowing the risks, you presented yourself to my eyes.”
“And you’re alright with me being here?” I asked. “Knowing what I am, and that the Church wouldn’t want me walking on holy ground?”
The veiled priest shrugged. “Excommunication is not dissolution, my son. It is meant to place one outside the benediction of the Faith so they may reflect and find their way back into the light, and it is not intended to be permanent. You have come here seeking what should be freely offered to all who live beneath the light of Onsolem. More than that, you still hold his benediction in you. Who am I to refuse your request? Much less the Empress’s?”
I had no reply to that. Me being here was a crime, and yet this old starcanter seemed willing to indulge it. After a moment absorbing his words I said, “I’m not sure everyone deserves to find their way back to the light again.”
“Deserve has nothing to do with it,” Alaric said. “Only desire. Only intent. Is your intention wicked? Do you seek to bring us harm? Or do you wish to cleanse yourself of doubts and find your way back to a path from which you’ve long strayed?”
“I…” I swallowed, my throat feeling very dry all of the sudden.
I hadn’t come here to make confession. I’d come here to demand answers, to drag the Onsolain down from their starlit thrones and compel them to tell me what they’d hidden from me, what they wanted from me. I wanted to complain, to gain some semblance of agency in my life, to gain direction in this dark and winding forest I’d found myself in.
Arrogance. And yet, I needed to know what They wanted from me. Yet, despite my better sense, Alaric’s words made me feel… Hopeful.
Then I wondered if he would offer these same words to Catrin. I wondered whether his grandfatherly manner would crack if he knew what I’d done — as the axeman for his gods, and as one of the Golden Knights of the west. Would he still tell me I had a place in God’s light if he knew I’d loved a monster? If he knew I still saw her in my dreams? Would he still welcome me back to the fold with arms held so widely open if he knew part of me wished—
I quieted my treasonous thoughts. Even still, I felt the weight of the book Lias had given me beneath my coat as an acute pressure. I hadn’t opened it yet. I wasn’t certain I wanted to know what it would tell me.
I knew it didn’t matter, whatever I learned. I’d chosen duty, and I’d ended things between us severely and completely. I’d run a blessed sword through her heart and cast her into the pits of Hell, and there was no going back from that.
And Laessa and Kieran’s situation had gotten to me, I realized. These thoughts were a distraction.
“I’m ready,” I told the priest. I wasn’t. I was full of doubts, but I needed to get this done.
Alaric nodded. “Then let us begin. Kneel in the circle.”
I knelt. Alaric did as well, his white robes pooling around him. The priest murmured behind his veil. The old cleric had real power. My aura shivered with his every syllable.
“I have opened a channel,” Alaric said after a time. It took me a moment to realize he’d used Urnic common and not his priestcant. “Now it is for the Onsolain to judge whether they will hear you. Name yourself, penitent. Tell the story of who you are, so the stars might know you. Name your sins and cast them out into the darkness, where the light might catch them.”
I gave him a dubious look. I knew how this was supposed to work, but I didn’t trust the modern Church. “That veil… Does it deafen you?”
Alaric smiled beneath the transparent cloth over his face. “I have only been reading your lips up until now. If you wish, you may turn away and let your words be for Them alone.”
I nodded, and shifted so my back faced the priest. I’d come this far, and there was no sense in backing out now. The gods knew all my sins already.
I inhaled deeply, steeled my nerves in the same way I did before a battle, and began to speak.
“My name is Alken Hewer,” I said. The tower seemed to drink my words, making them hollow and short-lived in the air. “Before that I was Alken of the Herdhold. My mother was a seamstress, and my father was a clerk. I’ve spent my whole life fighting.”
Outside the windows atop the dome, the gray fog of cloud which moved over the city obscured all sight. It felt as though the tower floated through a hazy limbo, a ship lost at sea.
“I befriended a wizard and a princess, and managed to bumble my way into a knighthood. I tried to be a good knight. I fought in wars. I battled men and demons. I learned just how big this world is, how small I am. I thought I was part of something that—”
I bit off my words, stumbling. It took a minute or two to gather my thoughts and continue.
“I believed I was part of something important,” I said more loudly. “Even when I saw the cracks in it, when I knew something was wrong, that the other knights were planning something, I ignored it. I kept serving, kept fighting, all the while thinking wiser minds and sterner hearts would show me the path. I had everything I ever wanted — I was a lord. A knight. I had comrades and prestige, powers beyond most mortals. I stood alongside heroes and kings. And I was… I was unhappy.”
I took a deep breath. Would Alaric turn out to be a devil, too? The thought almost made me laugh. It would be just my luck.
“I met someone. A priestess. I had doubts, fears, and she heard them all. It started as confession, knight to cleric, but it became something more. I loved her. I thought I loved her. She wasn’t what I thought she was, wasn’t… Wasn’t what she seemed. She was using me. I was a pawn in some sick game, and the other knights, they—”
The vision came in a flash, burning itself into my retinas.
A regal form bowed by the weight of steel, blood pooling before a throne of white leaves, running down steps like a vermillion waterfall. A white-cloaked woman pressing a pale hand to the blood, raising the hand as though in benediction. Men and women in beautiful armor standing aside as the elf bled his ancient life into the world, until he hollowed out and something else emerged.
Fire.
Ash.
A golden city crumbling.
A creature with a lion’s head laughing at the world’s end.
Fidei -- the thing that had called itself Fidei -- staring at me with burning tears spilling out of her eyes, calling me a coward. Her nails lashing out, slashing my face.
When the images faded, I was on my hands and knees. I had nearly fallen, found I couldn’t rise from that position. Cold sweat beaded on my skin, already soaking through my clothes. The scars over my left eye burned as though freshly riven.
I’d killed her. God, I’d killed her.
She was a monster. I had to.
Everything she’d warned me about had come to pass.
What was I supposed to do?
You have already confessed all of this.
When you became our Headsman.
The cold voice pressed down on me, booming, like the bells of Myrr Arthor given words.
You let your heart, your soul, and your oath be compromised by the Adversary.
You are as much at fault as your traitorous order.
For your blindness.
Your weakness.
You stood aside as our archon was murdered.
His seals undone.
We are without voice because of you.
Oathbreaker.
I looked up, and saw there was no longer any roof above me, no longer any veil of glass and stone between me and the stars. I stood atop what seemed the apex of a pillar taller than mountains, and all around me…
Nothing. Just empty darkness, distant bands of stars, spinning planetoids tumbling through a space vaster than my mind could encompass. It was cold. Deadly cold. Bands of frost large as countries entwined around the pillar like titan vines around a world tree.
Before me, near the edge of the pillar, stood a figure towering more than thirteen feet in height. He was clad in armor fashioned from the kind of ice one might find in the distant wastes to the south of Urn, unfrozen for a world’s lifetime. He held a spear whose grip was made of obsidian and whose head was a fragment of a star’s core. His eyes seemed fashioned from twin chips of ice within which a terrible light had been trapped, like molten insects in cold amber. The bare muscles of his arms were like the statues outside Myrr Arthor, pale gray and carved with a symmetry only an artisan could achieve.
A helm of simple, brutal design concealed his face, reminiscent of the greathelm a lord might wear at tournament, but alike to them in that a palace is alike to a peasant’s hovel.
An Onsolain. An angel of the First Kingdom. Not half-dead like the spirit fused to Donnelly, or diminished like Nath, but a Star-made Knight who had waged war when all the cosmos was dark, who had battled demons during the Sack of Heaven.
I’d gotten my audience.
God help me.
image [https://i.imgur.com/ZLwj1Qs.png]