Chapter 12 #2
The dark creature seemed to stand in a sea of water and the light creature in a sea of fire.
These seas were depicted in the colors of the other.
But in the center, there was no sea, just two beings — man, beast, devil, or angel, who could say — tangled together in what could have been an embrace, a mutual death, or a terrifying battle.
Whichever it was, one thing was very strange.
One of the two characters — and it was impossible to tell which one — was holding a trident, and each of the three tips was streaked in red.
I didn’t want to be near that window, though I could not have said why. That it was placed directly over the rhyme I’d recited for the others only made my stomach flip more. It was possible these monks merely had a theology that involved unfamiliar symbols and that my reaction was mere prejudice.
Unlikely. You’ve never been very prejudiced, my girl, except against the rich.
On the whole, I was inclined to agree with Sir Branson. Something was wrong here. If this place truly created Saints, then perhaps it weeded out unworthy candidates by showing them that window and then tossing anyone who didn’t see how problematic it was.
I would be the first to confess I hadn’t seen the great places of the earth’s kingdoms, despite my wide and varied travels, but among those I had seen, there’d always been a clear theme.
Good was depicted as slaying evil. Had this been a knight with his foot on a devil’s neck and that trident stuck in its back, I would have been happy to kneel in prayer before it.
It deeply troubled me that the others didn’t see the wrongness of a stalemate.
One of them added a happy verse to the song.
Yes, that was my first clue that the High Saint was not as high as he claimed to be.
The voice in my head snickered.
I adore your judgmental heart, little snackling. Don’t ever change it. It brings you closer and closer to me. Let’s go see what other paladins we can break, shall we?
Do you ever trip on your own certainty, Hxyaltrytchus?
No, but the tail can be problematic.
And now my cheeks were heating at being complimented by a demon for what was surely a sin. Tonight, I’d need to mortify my flesh to make penance. Perhaps I’d spend another night without the tent.
Or you could pass on the tea the Engineers make. That would be a fitting punishment for a judging heart.
The God forfend. That punishment was a bit steep.
For the first time since this began, I thought the laughter in my head might be Sir Branson’s.
I broke off from the others, hoping that in their reverence they wouldn’t notice me shuddering as I slipped away, and headed down the bank of windows at speed toward the towering feet of the statue that looked too much like our Prince Paladin.
Brindle loped beside me. Even given his possessed state, it felt better to have him with me.
It is better. You’d miss us if we left. Who would teach you to look past the surface?
I already did that well enough.
Yes, but not like I do. I can show you the infected heart of a man and tell you how he will rot.
What a delight.
And then I can offer recipes for rotted heart.
The light spilling from the stone-encased windows was unnerving — it seemed too bright and the sun still too low for all that had happened so far.
But perhaps, if I searched steadily and carefully, I could complete the search in one day and I wouldn’t have to pass through that eerie door again.
I hadn’t liked confessing my core sin. Saying it aloud felt too much like cementing it into reality.
And what if I had to add another sin to the list tomorrow?
What if I was struck dead for greed, as I was fairly certain Hefertus nearly had been?
You have all your things. You could camp in here. Wasn’t that your original intention? The horse will be fine. He’s beside a stream, and I’m sure the Engineers won’t be so heartless as to not check on the animals.
That had been my original plan. I glanced up above me at the gleaming black form barely visible from the marble floor. I wasn’t sure, anymore, that I could sleep in here. In fact, I was hardly certain that I could sleep above, knowing there was a demon trapped just below me.
And yet you sleep every night with one cuddled next to you. Ironic.
Brindle, oblivious to our conversation, trotted ahead, sniffing everything, from the mosaic map on the floor for a world that didn’t exist, to the feet of the statues. I hoped he didn’t feel the need to scent mark them.
It must be nice to be as oblivious as the other aspects were about demons but unfortunately, that made them poor backup if I were to try to cast the one above out.
You can’t. Not unless you open the trap. And if you do, then he’ll be loose first. You can’t remove him on your own. You need backup.
Once, when Sir Branson lived, we were rustled from where we were sleeping in a barn loft as a man with a red nose and redder eyes pled with us to join others of our aspect in his village.
“They say they can’t do it alone,” he’d told us, nearly tearing the edge of his jerkin as he wrung it back and forth between nervous hands. “Please come.”
We’d gone, grim and miserable, to help. It had taken two paladins, a squire, and a night of prayer, though fortunately we’d managed to dislodge the demon the easy way — without violence.
Had we not been near to help, Sir Fransisci might have had to try a more brutal method — or failed entirely.
I hadn’t thought of that night in decades. It had been … troubling.
“I thought you’d agreed that two were better than one,” a deep voice said, ripping me from the memory as the Poisoned Saint caught up with me.
Three is better than one. But four is entertaining. Dance for us, pretty knight. Bare your vices so we can laugh.
When I glanced at him, his eyes were scanning the room around us, catching on details and then discarding them as if he were looking for danger.
It was not easy to rule anything out quickly in this place.
Everything was carved or sculpted or decorated, so ornate, and breathtakingly intricate, and all of it carved in white stone.
I couldn’t help but wonder what the rooms aboveground might have been like.
Could they have matched this grandeur? You could host a ball in this main room at the bottom of the stairs and the beauty of the hall would outshine any guests.
Sir Adalbrand’s hand rode on his sword pommel, ready to draw at a moment’s notice.
When his eyes finally caught mine, they glittered with suspicion, matching the shining cup embroidered on his tabard.
It was the only bright thing on his person.
His cloak and tabard were black and his chainmail was rubbed with something to blacken it, too.
He looked out of place in this spotless white realm.
“Not one of the faithful?” I asked him, looking over my shoulder a second time, this time not at a demon but at those who were far more devout than I could be with my tenuous hold on faith, the God have mercy on me.
Whatever power they felt seeping through the air and into their souls when they prayed eluded me, left me empty and dry.
“You’re a puzzle, Lady Paladin,” Sir Adalbrand said with a small smile as he matched his pace to mine. He kept a wide berth from Brindle. That bite must still pain him.
A puzzle he wants to solve. Snicker.
Did the demon just say “snicker”?
The demon’s teasing might have made my tone sterner than usual. “I don’t see how I can puzzle you. I say what I mean and mean what I say.”
He might be pretty to look at and gentle with those hands, but right now Adalbrand was an unwelcome distraction.
I had a quest to complete, a demon waiting to drop on me from above, another ready to tear my throat out in the night the moment my paladin superior slipped, and a bad case of terror still lingering from passing through the door.
It made every shadow seem exaggerated and every item feel threatening.
Even the strange map on the floor made my skin crawl.
My heightened fear kept telling me that this was no monastery but an elaborate gate to hell, and that could not be true.
I did not need distractions on top of everything else.
“And you don’t stay for prayers,” he said softly, but his soft tone had a blade buried in it, ready to slide out and strike if he did not care for my answer.
Interesting.
I met his eyes then. The last orange in the morning light made their brown depths cinnamon. I could almost taste the spice on my tongue.
So can I, the demon purred.
“You didn’t stay for prayers either,” I said equally softly.
He licked his lips, considering. He was weighing something. Measuring his words with care.
“Didn’t your parents teach you to pray? Or were you born untamable?”
If I did not know better, I’d think he was beguiling me. His expression was subtle, barely playing in the fine lines around his mouth.
I hesitated. But what would the truth hurt? Especially now, when the secrets I had to keep were so much more dire than the ones about my past.
“My parents were good and devout, but they died at the hands of fever, one after another over the course of two nights.”
He looked stricken, and paused, laying a hand on my arm.
“You have my sympathy. Did you come to the Rejected God after that?”
I pressed my lips firmly together. I was not telling him this for sympathy and I didn’t need his condolences. Or his touch. What I needed was to satisfy his curiosity enough that he would leave me to my work.
“My parents were peddlers and laypeople for the Aspect of the Rejected God. Already on the road. Already devout. It did not seem too great a leap to seek out Sir Branson and beg him to make me squire after they passed. I had met him two weeks prior when our paths crossed and I knew him to be a paladin respected by my parents.”