It will be all right - never had a promise rung so hollow as this one now did. The restlessness within Cordelia’s heart, swelled to degrees unbearable after hours of lying in the dark, commanded her feet to move at last from the straw bed, which had seemed only some hours earlier the safest place in the world. Despite protests from every quarter, she placed lightly her hand on the unlocked door, and pushed.
As the stone-draping moonlight mingled with the room’s darkness, she felt the moment strangely familiar. It was quite like that time at her school’s rooftop. Perching precariously even so between life and death - between two dangers, twin evils - there had been little on her mind of the good and the bad then. Never the rationale of the antinatalist or the pious’s espoused blind reverence for the gift of life. Only that she must move, must make the step and take the leap when all else had failed her. And in that very situation where one ought to fight or flight, she had fought and had failed, and had thus taken the only remaining option to move from one shadow to another. So she did. Just like now.
She feared the exposing moonlight, that even now servants of the dark gods may be crawling into that window beyond the bend, creeping while blended in the silvery stone. And the voice at her wrist pestered her. Something of the night, of fiends she could not contend. But noisome were its cautions, ignorant concept of danger, even as the curious crowd with chins lifted up to the school’s rooftop, who did not know that she must flee. That the outcome of retreating is sometimes the same as moving forward. And so she stirred, disregarding the hisses and the chill along her spine, took the bend, and faced the moonlight.
The window was situated much higher than expected, a mere wide slit in the wall down an even longer corridor than the one she had been through when first entered the place. The night scene was fantastical, straight out of some fairy tale where the hero delves into forgotten ruins, searching betwixt lonely time-worn stones for treasures jealously guarded by morose ghosts.
“It is night!” the familiar hissed, persistent in the face of Cordelia’s disregard. “It is when our species is strongest! You must not leave this place, I beseech you! This is a folly!”
“Quiet, devil,” she muttered. “I shall not stay put for a moment longer. Not when I am hunted.”
“Whither will you flee? The keep will not have you, with a wariness so recently raised in young maidens of your appearances. Don’t I mislike temples of the good gods even more so than our brethren? And yet you and I must stay, so the barriers here erected may preserve us till morning!”
“Yet here stand you and I! Are we not feys? There is no want of methods to worm their ways in, if they know how to cheat mortal conscience, even as we did. I must go to the Maiden!”
But what then, would she cling to Esme’s side forever? Cordelia’s stubborn folly had caught up with her at last, and now the question was put to her again. But once more, she put it away, seeking only to survive the night, delaying the choice till the safety of morning.
“You may never reach the Maiden,” said Mastema, “Like as not they have this church surrounded, waiting for us to emerge like rats galled by hunger!”
Cordelia put a finger to her lips, less for fear that anyone should hear the soundless voice of her familiar, more so to concentrate on a faint sound her ears had picked up. She had reached the end of the corridor and found there the mouth of a stairwell. But across of it was a door not entirely shut. Peering within, she found a spacious hall. This was the chapel, evident in the rows of benches with an aisle in the middle leading to the altar. It recalled the Catholic churches of her old world, though with subtle differences even at first glance. There was no stained glass, nor the crucifix, and at the altar a dais rose emptily, being without a pulpit but rows and rows of candelabra upon it. Through a dozen of unpaned windows above this dais, the silver light and midnight chilliness entered freely into the chapel. In the middle of this dais there stood a man. His back was turned toward Cordelia, yet she could tell by the lean frame he was Father Sergius.
“Come in,” he said without turning, his voice echoed somberly by the concave’s acoustics.
For a moment she froze, but seeing that he was alone, she drew a deep breath and entered the chapel. Mastema stirred restlessly.
Opposite of the dais, she saw a great pair of sturdy doors, no doubt the entrance to the temple.
“I do not mean to disturb you, father,” she said. “But I have thought better of your earlier proposal, and have decided to seek help from my friends instead of taking further advantage of your kindness.”
“Do you mean to leave in the night?” he turned, his face unreadable. “Is it not better to wait till morning, where you may blend in with the people of day?”
“Yes, father. But I am anxious to leave, and as you said, my friends must be even now sick with worries, they knowing not my whereabouts while there’s talk of murder in town.”
There was silence. And for a moment she thought the priest was to come over, but he beckoned her instead.
With slow steps, she moved between the rows of pews. Each’s receding bench effected an accelerating motion, a foreboding illusion of some gravitational force pulling and pulling her ever onwards for the empty dais and its silent host. She misliked the chapel. She dreaded the light which exposed her to invisible creatures beyond the unpaned portals. And she sensed in the priest something disagreeable to her nature.
“What do you fear, Cordelia?” he asked enigmatically, unmoving.
“Is it not obvious, father?” she said, walking. “I am hunted for murder.”
“That is not what I ask.”
She stopped abruptly, a hand gripping the back of a pew. Her eyes fixated on the priest, waiting and watching for a sudden movement.
“What then, father, do you ask? Tell me in plainer speech, so I may answer,” she said, the calmness in her voice surprising herself.
“The shadow you lock within, graver than murder, deeper seated than sins. ‘Tis what I ask.”
And so said, he folded his arms. When from the dark of his sleeves the pale hands again emerged, there was between them a floating flame. Bright and white it was, sucking her attention even as Huginn’s light once did.
Cordelia’s entire body tensed up, her every sense whetted keen and further enhanced the brightness in his palm to a degree unbearable. His steps echoed like thunder across the dais. He was moving away. Now he lit each of the candelabra with great patience. Little flames swelled by the priest’s mysterious fire and swayed to the night breeze slipped in from the unpaned windows up high. Soon enough, the entire concave was burning warmly, and no more was the chilling silver from before.
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Even as Cordelia’s eyes were trained on the priest, watching for the slightest sign of betrayed hostility, he moved away from the candles, now to the side of the dais, and ascended a flight of stairs concealed in the wall. The final destination of these strange gestures were a pinnacle over the candelabra, a ledge which hung partway from the floor to the windows on high. The effect thus achieved was striking, almost mystical. The priest stood as though floating between two worlds: the fiery down below where the candles blazed, and the frigid shafts of moonlight unchecked from high heaven. The glow of fire swayed and groped at his feet; the unerring light crowned his head. And no more was the lean, fragile man, but a being enchanted by lights supernatural, wielding neatly in his palm the power to elevate or condemn. And Cordelia gazed up to meet his twinlit countenance, feeling only the heat of fire against her face, yet knew that should only these flames be quenched natural moonlight would bathe her once more.
“Stop thinking.” A stern voice, sterner than she had remembered of the man’s wonted timbre, bolstered by the effect of his circumstance, though not completely devoid of the gentle quality underlying the feeble old man. “You dwell far too much in the world without, Cordelia. You are scared, distracted, by things of little consequence. Why deny you so the truth? Even now you stand in the house of God, no secular power may judge you here. There’s only I, a powerless old man, for the brief purpose of serving you this night. Have you faith, Cordelia?”
“I am from a place far from here, Father,” she said automatically, wanting to retreat from the fiery dais’s vicinity, yet could not. “And there, we know not your gods, but worship different beings, and some in truth know naught gods at all.”
“Again you stray from the question asked. Cordelia, I ask if you have it in you to believe.”
“Do you ask if I am a skeptic? Then to that my answer is no. Too often life has driven me beyond reasons and doubts, that I must choose to believe or give up on it entirely. Is belief in desperation at all truthful belief, father?”
“It is a kind. Then mayhap you shall believe when I tell you this: it is no mere coincidence we stand here this night. For in my slumber I was roused as though by a hand, at once gentle and stern, placed upon my shoulder. Yet when I lit a candle I found no hand, but in the tiny flame I sensed an intense purpose: I was needed elsewhere. So I did obey and made to this place, thinking to seek by prayers the identity of whom I must save. It was when you came.”
“That is a quaint story, priest.” The desire to retreat grew more pressing than ever before. There was in her a dark dread, for she found the strange speech of the priest repulsive. And she thought she heard a snarling sound coming out of her own throat, and in her heart a loathing born of rage and fear. “But too bad I am not in need of your deliverance. My troubles are more than a human may fix! My sins no priest of the good gods has the power to punish or pardon! Release me, priest! And spare yourself, for you cannot contend with those who are coming for me!”
There was a pause.
“Are you a fey, Cordelia?”
“So what, if I am?”
“Then you are mistaken,” the priest stared down at her, his eyes unwavering, “For even feys are not beyond punishment and pardon. And though your kind has a master of your own, you are not beyond the world’s good and evil. Repent and confess, Cordelia le Fey! And spare yourself, for you cannot contend with those coming for you.”
“Ridiculous!” her voice rose, “I have done naught to repent, though I was born for evil. I have naught to confess, besides wrongs done unto me! If it is that guard you speak of, then I do not regret killing him! Again presented the choice, I would still murder that fiend without a second thought, by the same blade or my hands around his throat!”
“Your heart is hardened! You think and think, occupied by the world without and let yourself be distracted. What do you fear, Cordelia? Why loathe yourself so, Cordelia?”
“Because I...” But she could never finish the sentence, for in that moment there came a terrible sound from behind her.
Her face paled, she whipped her head to the temple’s entrance, and saw the doors shaken by a succession of powerful blows. Great fists from beyond pounded rapidly like rolling thunders. The sturdy doors refused to give, for now.
“Release me right this instant!” she cried. “They are come!”
“Mind yourself!” the priest roared, “Is it your wont to flee to outward distraction while your heart you lock away? Confess!”
The pounding grew intense. And sounds like shrieks and roars rose to the hurried beats. The very air shuddered as the barriers were stretched to the limits. And Cordelia knew her doom was at hand.
“There is no time!” she pleaded. “They come! They come!”
“There will be no other time but now! Say it!”
Already she could hear the cracking of wood, the sounds of enormous splinters hitting the cobbled yard in front of the temple. The doors shuddered. The air shuddered. The strange roaring drew near.
“Fine!” she cried, her voice hoarse with anger, alarm, and disgust. The whites of her eyes reddened with infernal emotions as she stared skywards at the priest. And she raised her voice even above the besieging clamor, “So you want the truth of myself? Is it your wish to molest my shame and secrets? Then hark well: I lied! All I ever do is lie! Conscience? Morality? Pride? I have none of those whoreson bullcrap! Do I hate evil and demons? Do I pity that girl? No and never! Deep down, I despise all of you in this world to the last! There is no devil because there is not a one of you who is not a waiting evil! Each of you only cares for your own gains, your own pleasure, at the expense of others, at the suffering of myself! So long as you can get away with it, you don’t care! To you who call yourself family and friends, I am nothing but a plaything to toy with as you like; a bag of flesh for pleasure; a loathsome vermin naturally meriting your meanest torments!
“And yet, for all my hate, I must effect a conscience where there’s not! Because unlike you hypocrites, it hurts me even more deeply to harm and hate - it is a torment! Because though I hate and despise, though I wish death for all of you who are happy so long as you and yours are happy; who know kindness only when it’s done for your benefit - I would despise myself even more to fall to your level - that level of those who cause and laugh at another’s sufferings! Why cannot I simply hate? Why cannot I freely harm and hurt as easily as you do? How liberating it would be if I could just throw myself away, and care not for what I am but simply wipe out this world clean! How nice it would be, if I could just let myself be consumed by the Lord of Serpents and wreck this world all over! Maybe I can, after all. Do you know, priest? Yesterday when Sister Birna found me in that cookery, the devil whispered in my ear that I must slay her out of hand. And for a moment I did entertain the idea! Kill that old woman, spill her guts with a knife! Why cannot I? Why, because I am a coward! A pretentious coward! One who would take her own life soon after the act! I have not the conviction to cleanse this world before ending my own misery by the easiest escape! And so I must lie to myself, conceal my contempt and call cowardice conscience.
“So there you have my confession, priest. Do you still want me to repent these lies and abandon myself to killing and ruination? Do you still want me to stop denying myself but embrace my true nature of hatred and resentment? That, you cannot!”
The doors gave at last. Oaken panels and metal bindings burst, blasted and crashed rows and rows of pews. She did not care to look, fixing her eyes only on the priest whom she hated. He symbolized all of humanity in that moment: from a place on high haughtily looking down upon her and condemned and judged, for all the wants of goodness in themselves. In turn, the Priest kept his gaze steadily upon her, disregarding whatever had stormed the temple by unholy might.
Then he said slowly, “Know yourself, Cordelia. All your virtues and vices, all your weaknesses and strengths, are they not all part of yourself? Make yourself whole Cordelia, all your dark past and bleak present. For it is your choice in the end that matters, not how you were born, how you were treated, how you have been forced to live! Our lives are ours, our souls untouchable. And we all of us were sent to this world to prevail in the light of goodness, if we but follow the light in our heart!”
Cordelia laughed. And, her body released from the strange force, she dropped to the floor. Sitting there, she went on to laugh mirthlessly at the great irony of it, at the naive belief of the priest, at her stupid situation. For he did not know what she was. And she decided to tell him it.
“You know nothing, father. You know nothing of how I was sent to this world and what mission I am meant to follow! I am a demoness, born with no light but a darkness of corruption in my heart, cursed by my Dark Master and not your good gods, for the sole purpose of defiling the Maiden of God - the very savior of humankind!”
“You are what?” a voice started her from behind.
She turned around, knowing already the familiar voice, and saw, standing with his blade dripping the black blood of her brethren and glowering with anger, no one else but Sir Derrick the knight.