Chapter 23 #2
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t,” I said, trying to sound bored, “though I’ve heard tales. She must have been quite splendid.”
“But you were in the city called Mhorghast, were you not?”
My awareness of Gareth pinged sharply at the word, but his stride didn’t falter for even a second.
“Unfortunately, yes, I was.”
“Then surely you must have seen her? She died there, I’ve been told. Kilraith killed her.”
“So people have said. I was rather occupied at the time.”
Errik stopped at a set of great wooden doors and looked back at me keenly.
Torchlight flickered in his eyes. “Yes. You and your sisters have been busy indeed. You killed the god Jaetris. You looked into his eyes and tore open the body that held him.” He tilted his head to the side. “Do you think you could do that again?”
All the fine hairs on my nape stood up. How did this monk know the details of what we’d done? Gareth moved a bit closer to me, his body radiating heat. I swore I could feel the drum of his racing heartbeat echoing my own.
“You’ve certainly heard some wild stories, Brother,” I said flatly. “I’m sure many would take pride in shocking a holy man such as yourself.”
Errik smiled. “You have studied the Olden arcana for years, Mara. You’ve studied human history, the Unmaking, the gods.
” His gaze slid to Gareth, his smile widening.
“And so have you, Professor. You’ve dedicated your life to the acquisition of knowledge.
And yet nothing either of you had learned properly prepared you for meeting him, did it? ”
A shiver skipped down my spine.
“You’re talking about Kilraith,” Gareth said quietly.
“He Who Is All,” Errik replied.
“He Who Is All,” intoned other voices. I looked back over my shoulder; a dozen monks had joined us from nearby corridors, forming columns at our backs. Inwardly, I cursed. Somehow I’d missed the sound of their approach. I needed to focus.
“Tell me,” Errik said, unlatching the two great doors, “what is more powerful than a god?”
“Nothing,” Gareth answered immediately.
“Once, I would have agreed with you. Not anymore.”
Errik led us through the doors into a huge sunken room, and the other monks flooded in around us. Tapestries depicting legends of the goddess Zelphenia lined the walls, muffling every sound.
A heavy wooden table sat at the room’s center, bordered by polished blue tiles.
In front of the table was a large stone basin.
It must have once been a fountain; a faceless statue of Zelphenia stood in the middle of it, her arms draped in delicately sculpted veils.
Faint dark paths streaked down her body where water had once flowed, like the echoes of tears.
But the water she had once stood in was gone.
In its place was a crimson pool of blood.
I froze. One of the monks nearest me tried to pull me forward, but I wouldn’t budge, didn’t move even an inch. The monk lost his footing and stumbled back.
“Where is the Blessed Abbot?” I said, very low.
Errik stopped at the fountain of blood and turned to face us, his hands clasped at his waist. He still wore that same mild smile plastered across his face, only now I saw clearly that it held nothing but malice.
“I tried to convince him of the truth,” Errik replied, “but he would not listen. Now his blood—and the blood of those loyal to him—will serve a greater purpose. You are familiar with the unknowable arts, I assume? The art of divining truth from natural objects? The goddess Zelphenia was particularly fond of scrying pools, and we do not reject her teachings entirely, false god though she may be.”
Suddenly the source of that basin of blood was perfectly, horribly clear.
The mocking regret in Errik’s voice made me want to tear out his throat. “What truth are you talking about? Of what madness have you convinced yourself?”
“That the gods mustn’t be found and protected,” Gareth said, his own voice hard as flint. “They must be found and destroyed. Just as Kilraith wishes.”
Errik’s face lit up with delight. “Exactly right, Professor. And there is your answer. Nothing is more powerful than our fraudulent gods. Nothing except for He Who Is All.”
“He Who Is All,” echoed the other monks.
Kilraith.
“The one true god,” Errik murmured, his eyelids fluttering closed.
“The one true god,” responded the others.
Errik’s earlier words returned to me like a blow to the temple. You killed the god Jaetris. You looked into his eyes and tore open the body that held him.
Do you think you could do that again?
“If you think I’ll help you destroy the gods,” I muttered, so furious I could hardly see straight, “then you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.”
Errik smiled sadly at me. “I understand, Mara. Unlearning years of holy teachings is difficult. But you will manage it soon, I think.”
As the doors thudded closed behind us, I spun around, fists raised, every muscle in my body taut as a bowstring and ready to fight—but then Errik intoned something under his breath, and acrid spellwork crackled through the air, stealing my breath.
I spat out a curse; Errik was a beguiler.
My eyes instinctively closed against the sting of magic, and when I opened them again, Gareth was no longer beside me.
He lay on the fountain’s stone ledge, kept immobile by Errik’s spellwork, and Errik himself held a knife to Gareth’s throat. The tip of the blade pressed into his neck, drawing bright drops of blood.
“Agree to help us, and I’ll spare his life,” Errik said patiently, looking back at me. “I hope you can appreciate the sacrifice I’d be making by letting him live. The blood of a sage would considerably enhance the power of our scrying pool.”
He barely got the words out before I lunged at him. My restrained power burst through me like an explosion, and in three seconds I had him pinned flat to the floor. A quick jab to his throat, and he was helpless beneath me, voiceless and gasping for breath.
My head snapped up at the metallic scrape of blades being drawn. The other monks surged toward me, withdrawing daggers from the pockets of their voluminous robes.
Daggers. I faced them all with a grin, my muscles blazing and ready. As if a few knives were enough to best me.
I flew at them lightning fast, my feet barely touching the floor. It felt so good to let loose my strength after everything that had happened—my night with Gareth, the tension between us, the strange supper in the dining hall—that laughter bubbled up in my throat from sheer relieved joy.
A monk came at me with a hard swipe of his blade, and I kicked it from his hand.
It went flying, and the monk crashed to his knees, cradling his shattered fingers and howling in pain.
Another monk threw spellwork at me; I recognized the murky, rotten odor of magic meant to stun my senses and leave me slow and befuddled.
But I was ready for that. I ducked the spell—a shimmer of arcing light cutting through the air like a scythe—and then ran at my attacker, rammed my head into his stomach, and sent him flying.
He slammed into a wall and slumped to the floor, unmoving.
More monks entered from side doors—another three, then an additional seven—but as more and more of them flooded the room, I only grew stronger, my power rising gleefully to meet the challenge.
I spun and kicked, threw punches and flung dropped blades, and I was so fast and liquid, my senses so sharp, that the world boomed and flashed around me.
Each small sound was amplified, each slight change in the air alerted me to a dagger flying at my head or a punch coming for my throat.
Suddenly the floor bucked beneath me, throwing me off my feet. I rolled to cushion my landing and looked up just in time to see a crack in the polished stone racing toward me. Elemental. One of the monks was an elemental.
I leapt out of the way just in time, then barely dodged a slab of stone dropping from the ceiling. It crashed to the floor in a cloud of dust. Fragments of stone skidded across the ruined tile.
A cry of despair tore through the room.
“What have you done?” came Errik’s rasping voice. “No, no!”
I whirled around and saw chaos.
Five fresh chasms had cleaved the room into pieces.
One of them ran through the fountain, splitting it in two.
The statue of Zelphenia toppled over before my eyes; her head smashed into the fountain’s rim and shattered.
Blood spilled out of the ruined fountain, painting the splintered floor red.
I refused to let myself wonder how many people had been murdered to make that scrying pool.
And what Errik and his followers might have used the pool for.
What had Kilraith promised them? And what would anyone who survived this night report to him once the dust settled?
But then I saw Gareth, and the sight of him wiped my mind clean of everything else.
He lay amid the ruins of the fountain, his body bent awkwardly over a slab of broken stone.
The fountain’s spilled blood pooled around him, and he clutched at his throat with frantic red hands.
Beside him, clinging to a shattered slab of stone, was Errik, brandishing his knife triumphantly.
He grinned at me, wild-eyed and blood-splattered, then drew a rasping breath to speak, but before he could utter a sound, I was on him.
One sharp kick to his temple, and he collapsed against the ruins of his beloved fountain, his skull shattered.
I hurried to Gareth and assessed his condition with a sinking heart.
He’d lost his glasses somewhere, so nothing blocked my view of his eyes—glassy, terrified.
Blood bubbled up between his fingers from a bright red gash on his throat.
Not a fatal wound, not yet, but it would become one soon. He was losing too much blood.
“It’s all right,” I muttered, trying to keep my voice calm even as fear pounded a death knell along my spine. “You’re going to be all right. It’s not too bad. We just have to stop the bleeding.”
I grabbed Errik’s knife and used it to cut a strip of cloth from the part of his robes that wasn’t soaked in blood.
With shaking fingers I tied the cloth around Gareth’s neck, as tight as I could make it while still allowing him to breathe.
Blood seeped through the cloth immediately.
He was pale, gleaming with sweat, and his every breath rattled.
I picked him up as gingerly as I could, trying not to panic at how light he felt in my arms. I knew his body, knew how solid and strong it was, and how it felt to be held by him, loved by him.
He felt so insubstantial only because my sentinel strength was at its peak, I told myself.
I didn’t look at him again; I couldn’t, or I’d fall to my knees.
A noise behind me—someone stumbling through the mess of blood and stone.
I whirled, rage painting my vision as red as the floor under my feet.
I didn’t know how I would kill whoever attacked me next; I just knew that I would destroy them so completely that no one would be able to recover even a small piece of their body.
I would kill everyone within these sacred walls if I had to.
“Wait! Mercy, please!” A young monk with dark brown skin stood there, her hands raised to ward me off. “I don’t want to hurt you!”
“You have three seconds to convince me not to kill you,” I said, fury making my voice tremble.
She glanced over my shoulder, then darted to the side and flicked her wrists downward.
The floor split open at her feet, and the crack raced behind me, widening as it sped toward its target—another monk, dagger in hand, eyes bright with anger and lip swollen from the impact of my fist. But before he could make another move, the growing chasm reached him, opening up beneath his feet.
He fell into it with a scream, and soon nothing was left of him but faint sounds of agony from somewhere below.
I turned back to the young monk—clearly the elemental who’d destroyed the fountain—and gave her a brisk nod. “Fine. I won’t kill you. Yet.”
“Follow me,” she said breathlessly, hurrying past me. “I’ll show you the way out.”
I obeyed; what choice did I have? Gareth was wheezing in my arms, and I couldn’t hold him and keep him alive and fight off more monks at the same time. We needed help; we needed a healer, or at least a quiet, clean room where I could try to stitch his wound closed.
I followed the monk silently through twisting dark corridors, my eyes burning and my throat tight with tears I refused to let fall. We entered a dank passage with stone walls and an earthen floor. The monk took a torch from a bracket on the wall, lit it, and finally spoke again.
“No apology I could offer is enough for what’s happened here tonight,” she murmured. Her voice was thick with anger. “But I am sorry nevertheless, my lady. I am so sorry.”
“Not a lady,” I replied automatically. I’m a Rose. I said the words over and over to myself like a prayer. I’m a Rose, and I can save him.
“A radical sect of the fellowship led by Errik has been secretly serving Kilraith for several weeks now,” the monk went on. “I was one of them for a time. But now I see how foolish I was, and I’m doing everything I can to stop them.”
“They killed the Blessed Abbot.”
“Yes, and twelve others. Including my sister.”
Her voice was hard, flat. My chest twisted painfully. Gemma’s and Farrin’s faces flashed before my eyes.
We reached a heavy wooden door, which the monk unlatched and pushed open with no small effort.
I soon saw why: a snowstorm had descended upon the island.
Several inches had piled up against the door, and past the glow of our torch, I could see nothing but sheets of snow swirling through the thick black night.
The monk’s face fell.
“Don’t worry,” I told her briskly. “I’ll manage.”
She glanced up at me. “I hope you’ll tell the Warden what’s happened here. Errik may be dead, but others will rise to take his place. And after tonight…”
She didn’t have to finish. I saw the hollow acceptance right there on her face. If anyone had seen her help me, she was finished. Someone would kill her that very night.
“I’ll tell her. You have my word.” I paused. It seemed cruel to leave her, but Gareth’s breathing was growing shallower by the minute. I couldn’t linger.
“What is your name?” I asked her.
“Serra.” She smiled a little. “Serralin, but my sister called me Serra.”
“Serra.” I touched her arm, gave it a slight squeeze. “Thank you for what you’ve done tonight.”
Then I gathered Gareth as close as I could and plunged into the storm.