Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Vagabond Paladin
By the five bones. By the Saint’s cowl. By the —
I felt the demon rip the voice from Sir Branson and take it himself.
Ignore it, snackling. It’s not your concern. Keep going.
But it was a demon. Most certainly. I had no doubt. And neither did my companions, based on their reactions. I should cast it out. I should not flee.
I adore your arrogance that you think you could cast out a demon someone else trapped thousands of years ago.
Ages have passed. The world has turned. This place was buried and revealed and in all that time this trap has held …
and you will open it? You adorable child.
You sweet summer lamb. You will disassemble the cage? You will remove the bait?
Bait?
What would you name it? This is not a prison made to hold demons. There’s a special name for that place, if you’ll recall. The denizen you just saw is the minnow slid onto the hook. It waits for a much bigger fish.
But what would a living demon be bait for?
More demons? Perhaps these monks were set on the destruction of evil forces?
Whoever was counseling me now seemed very uncertain about his suggestion.
And I was just as wary. I bit my lip until I almost tasted blood.
Fear coursed ragged and sharp through my veins.
It was my payment for entering this place, I knew it.
For I had not been this terrified when my own, dear Sir Branson tried to kill me, nor when I was forced to slay him, nor when his face was torn off by his dog.
Fear is a useful weapon when one must be careful not to slip into a roaring river, but it is a terrible thing when there is no clear danger and one must watch every shadow for what might be the threat.
I peered upward again. I didn’t like the look of these massive statues. I didn’t like that they looked like us. How could they have been made in our image when they were created thousands of years ago?
There are great forces at work here. Don’t you feel them? Or are you too thick? Too human?
Quiet, fiend.
Quiet yourself, sweetmeat. You need me down here. Need me more than you ever needed the old paladin. He’s nothing now but an echo of a conscience that isn’t serving you. Lean now on me. You’ll need it if you’re going to lead this pasty cohort to victory.
I swallowed and followed Adalbrand down the stairs. He was acting strangely, seeming to want to be near me and distant from me both at once, and he still limped from where Brindle had bitten a chunk out of his leg.
Worth it.
I was worried he might be an unstable ally.
I stole a glance at him. His shoulders were slumped and face was pale from healing the others. Interesting that none of them stayed behind to make sure he was capable of continuing. Was it possible that Poisoned Saints were as overlooked as Vagabond Paladins?
It’s not quite the same. The things that blind the average person to our worth are not quite the same as what makes them squirrelly around the Poisoned Saints.
With us, they are blind — they see only surface things and since our surface is grimy, they do not see the gold beneath it, just as they cannot see the rot beneath a lacquered surface.
In the case of the poor Poisoned Saints, no one likes the reminder that they bear for us what we cannot bear ourselves.
It makes the soul squirm a little. Guilt is handled easiest when banished deep underground.
Amen to that, the demon agreed. I never have dealings with guilt. He cheats you every time.
The demon spoke as if guilt were a person.
Of course he is. He wears a strange hat and has too many eyes for his face.
I shivered. This place was not the right setting for stories that made the spine crawl.
Perhaps Adalbrand’s strangeness, then, was only his reaction to this beautiful but haunting place. Or perhaps he was likewise possessed by a slightly indulgent demon who would rip his throat out if it could.
I swallowed the hysterical laugh that tried to crawl up my throat and rested a hand on Brindle’s head.
He smelled incredibly doggy for an animal that was really only one-third dog.
I leaned into the scent, trying to remember what was real and physical in a world stained through with spirits.
I did not want this monastery to get under my skin any more than it was and already it was creeping under it like an army of ants on a quest to raid my heart.
What kind of monks would have been in a place like this?
Can’t you feel the power here? Even a thousand years later it pulses through me like life blood.
The power made me itch worse than pepperleaf.
What if it can make you a Saint? What if it made the other Saints you know and adore?
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Was it possible that some of the statues in the churches I had visited were of mortals who came to this very place and sat underneath that glossy black demon, and somehow were refined into something brighter and more holy?
And if they were, who was I to say that this was wrong or threatening?
A good paladin would want it, wouldn’t she?
No matter the discomfort. No matter the price.
Say your catechism, my dear. I always find that helps.
I didn’t think it was going to help this time.
The demon started to laugh.
It’s a good suggestion, even if it was made by a fiend, Sir Branson said wryly. Is that how you begin, demon? Do you take the unsuspecting slowly, first with good advice and then gradually with a souring of it?
I shivered. I would not be taken by a demon. Not now. Not ever. I glanced up at the ceiling again, horribly conscious that now there were two demons in the room, and I — a hunter of demons — seemed unequal to the task of destroying either of them.
I want to be very clear, Sir Branson told me. The demon in your head is not a toy. He is not tame. You must not grow used to him.
Oooh, what’s this now? Treachery?
We were nearly to the bottom of the stairs and the other paladins were all staring at words etched below the triptych window. Someone had thought they were important enough to carve them as tall as my hand into the stone and then inlay them with bronze. As one, the others turned to look up at me.
Good thing I’d brought the dog. Apparently, I’d be working translation duty for the duration of this foray. I reached down and laid a hand on Brindle’s head. He looked up at me with those liquid puppy eyes.
“Who’s a good doggy, then?” I whispered to him.
Isn’t he warming to the heart? You know as well as I do that you could never kill him, snackling.
The demon laughed in my mind.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Sir Adalbrand looking up at the broken window with a wen between his brows. Did he see something there that I did not?
Read the words, demon. And let’s see what it takes to be made a Saint.
The laughter grew louder but the demon complied.
“Our hearts spoke out our hopes
And our souls bore the cost
The man and the spirit
and all that was lost.
Bold together we race
where no others have trod.
For we are more than men,
We have become … Saints.”
So, these people really did think they could become Saints. Those privileged few chosen by the God to do great works upon the earth or sit in his council after death. What devoted worshipper wouldn’t crave that? Surely, no paladin would back down from such a challenge.
I glanced around at the eight paladins with me — each representing a different way of viewing the same god. Were these people Saint material?
“What does it say, Beggar?” The Majester General asked me. Charming. He should double as a jailkeeper with a face like that.
I kept my own face blank and even as I repeated the demon’s translation, trying to judge the reactions of those listening.
And if it was strange that a demon was rattling off the recipe to be made a Saint, no one noticed.
And if it was odd that every eye seemed to light and every back grow straighter, well, no one mentioned that either. But I was keeping mental notes.
“So, this really is a place where Sainthood can be found,” Sir Kodelai said with a reverent sigh.
No one could fault him for his holy ambition.
“It’s been four generations since a Saint was named.
Is it possible that we needed a place like this to finally achieve holy perfection before the face of the God? ”
“If we find the Cup, perhaps,” the High Saint said in a quelling tone.
By the glimmer in his eye, I thought he found it a personal affront that someone else would consider themselves to be worthy of Sainthood when he was standing right there — practically an inch from their noses — being the most austerely holy of them all. “Let us pause and pray.”
I wasn’t interested in listening to more of their chatter and I didn’t want to spend a moment more lingering here than I had to — not even in prayer.
There was an itch between my shoulder blades that wouldn’t go away, and the manner in which the paladins all paused to kneel together around the broken triptych made my skin crawl.
The sea breeze drifted in through the panes of the triptych in sharp, cold gusts.
The original window had depicted two characters, one pale in whites and blues, the other formed of dusky dark crimsons and flaring golds.
Flowers in varying states of bloom were scattered across the bottoms of their individual panes.
Someone had taken considerable efforts to depict each in their own window and then the pair of them tangled together in the larger middle windowpane.
Just enough of the windows had been lost that both individual windows were missing the creatures’ faces and whatever had been in their hands.