Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Poisoned Saint
My hands are still shaking from my role in this horrific pantomime when the floor beneath us begins to shake and then, to my horror, to move.
It turns ponderously, the motion forcing all of us to focus more on keeping our balance than anything else.
I sink into a half crouch, trying to look everywhere at once to find the source of the movement.
An earthquake? A judgment of the God for the travesty of that mock trial and execution?
Little rippling growls tear from the brindled dog’s mouth, but they’re muted under the sound of grinding and a slight squeal. Something is moving that has not moved in a very long time.
“Imagine the size of the gears!” Sir Sorken exclaims to Sir Coriand over the sound. “I told you those weren’t just decorative.”
“But wouldn’t you need to put the axle straight through? If it were merely balanced on top, the torque at just one end would break the whole structure.” Sir Coriand’s voice is hard to make out in the din.
“Clearly not,” Sir Sorken yells back, wonder on his face as he looks upward. “Though from the sound of it, it could use a solid greasing!”
I follow his gaze to see that even the patterned metal grate on the ceiling where the demon is held is twisting as the room we are in spins.
After what feels like an hour later, though it could only have been a few heartbeats, the room begins to grow darker and I swivel again to look behind us, to where the windows that had let in the bright light before are now sliding to face ragged stone and strips of corridor leading to the rooms we explored yesterday.
In their place, a cutout bas-relief — that used to be the wall to the right of the windows when going down the stairs — is taking its place.
The cutouts are small, too small for a person to go through, though sea birds could certainly try.
And the light that shines between them illuminates a carved scene of a man grappling with a five-headed serpent.
By some odd coincidence, the wind whistles through the holes in just such a way that it makes a hollow tune of sorts, though an irregular, broken, chimeric one.
I steal a glance at the Majester, who is staring at the broken windows covering yesterday’s corridor. If he failed to gather all the cups from those rooms yesterday, he certainly never shall.
I startle when the Vagabond throws off her fur robe, dislodging a waterskin and a leather-bound book she had stuffed inside its folds.
Of course. I knew she hid something there.
She startles me by taking off like a shot toward the staircase.
She barely seems burdened at all by the armor she wears.
She could win a footrace in the deserts of Haroun where I was raised.
Behind me, Hefertus curses and runs after her, the brindled dog hot on his heels. He’ll have a time and a half catching her.
I turn to look at Sir Owalan, standing there with his mouth forming an “O” and his hand still on the key inserted in the lock.
He waits until the room finishes turning and comes to a juddering stop before whispering.
“I just wanted to see what it would do. I was curious.”
“So were we all,” Sir Sorken says approvingly. “Well then, my lad. Open it up. Let’s see what all this fuss is about!”
“Shouldn’t we bury the bodies first?” I ask, dismayed. They’re walking right through this scene of murder like children trampling a prized flower garden.
“Oh, just shuffle them off to the side somewhere,” Sir Sorken says, his ugly face blank when he glances over at the dismembered Seer and the dust and bones of Sir Kodelai.
Perhaps I should have confessed to anger. It wells up in me now, bubbling to the surface.
“Put them on one of those beds, maybe. A good resting place, hmm?” he says, as if to mitigate his disregard.
“Oh, he can’t do that,” Sir Coriand says distractedly as they open the door.
It swings out to show another door of lacework, and at the center of it is an ivory carved plaque that shows a sun going over the plane of the earth.
It marks the sun at the left edge with three lines, the sun halfway to peak with five lines, the sun at peak with one line, the sun descending to the right with two lines, and the sun dancing along the far end with four lines.
Sir Coriand shakes the lacework. “It’s latched and I don’t really see the mechanism to open it.”
“I think it would open if the room turned again.” Sir Sorken is just as taken as his fellow Engineer, pushing his ruddy cheek hard against the lace as he tries to peer in and up at the mechanism. “Look, just there.”
“Oh yes, of course,” Sir Coriand says happily before turning back to us and saying, “But you can’t put the bodies on the beds. Now that everything has turned, the hall that led to that wing leads somewhere else.”
“Where else?” Sorken sounds distracted.
“To wherever we thought this door led. Until we solve this puzzle, at least. It is obviously instructions to turn the room again. What a lovely marvel of engineering this is. Well worth the trip to see it, all casualties of course excepted. Can you see what lies through the lattice, Sorken?”
Sir Sorken grunts. “Hall’s too long. Could be hell herself for all we know.”
“It’s a puzzle?” the Majester asks, scratching feverishly on his parchment.
“Do keep up, Majester General,” Sir Coriand says.
“It’s times of day, isn’t it? But the numbers must mean some kind of order, though why it starts at noon and hops all around, I wouldn’t know.
Probably worth noting, though. Good thing you brought pen and ink.
The real question is, will that fountain still work?
If that still splashes water up after the whole monastery has been swiveled, that would be a real wonder, don’t you think, Sorken? ”
“I prefer my wonders less opaque,” the other Engineer complains, “but yes, I’d consider it nigh on impossible.”
“Yes, rather,” Sir Coriand says, giggling like a schoolboy.
“Are you saying that the room I opened is down there now? Across from the clock?” Sir Owalan asks, eyes wide, pointing a trembling finger back toward the clock and the entrance that used to lead to the dormitories.
“I thought we were very clear,” Sir Sorken says. Which clarifies nothing for the Penitent. “If you’re confused you should consult the Majester’s map.”
“He means yes.” I am annoyed and it shows in my shortness. “But before you go running off, help me with our fallen.”
I still feel sick over Kodelai’s death. The most respected and well-known member of the Hand of Justice and he died at my challenge. I feel responsible. Just as I feel responsible for letting the Seer’s warning go unheeded. Two deaths, and they’re both ultimately at my feet.
Sir Owalan pauses. And so do the others, looking from me, to the fallen, and back again.
“They look well reposed as they lie,” the High Saint says tentatively. “And there’s really nowhere to put them.”
“Or any way to wash after touching them,” Sir Owalan agrees.
I feel my mouth fall open, but before I can reply, the High Saint says, “Let us pray.”
We’re swept up in the rote prayer for the fallen, spoken in concert over the bodies.
It takes long minutes. Minutes where I’m bound in place, wondering if Hefertus and Victoriana are at the top of the steps.
If they’ve found we can still leave this vault.
If they’ve left without us. I look up, but from this angle, I can see nothing but the demon looking down on me.
I dare not break tradition, or spit on these poor fallen souls, but I ache to move, to answer the questions plaguing me.
When, at last, the High Saint speaks the final words and we all intone, “Amen,” the slap of feet on marble has grown loud. We watch as the Vagabond and the Prince return, both out of breath, both sprinting back to us.
“The door,” Hefertus bursts out while they are still quite a way off. “The door is shut.”
The dog reaches us first, his expression so intent that my heart seizes for a moment, sure he is about to attack.
Instead, he slows and circles both us and the dead, sniffing around the perimeter.
If he disturbs the bodies then I will have no choice.
He will join them in death. I hope the Vagabond realizes that and prevents it from needing to occur.
I shoot a glance at her, hoping she reads my warning, but she mistakes it for a question.
“The door is still open but it doesn’t matter. It leads now to a solid rock wall.” Victoriana’s eyes are hard with what I take to be fear. “We’re trapped in here.”
Now my heart really seizes and I fight a sudden dizzy spell as I realize what she’s saying.
No food with us. No water if the fountain has ceased.
No tools to carve our way out, and even if there were tools …
how would we do it? The door was never a proper door to begin with.
It was always a miracle. We don’t even know how far beneath the earth this place is.
Sir Coriand looks over his shoulder, abandoning his study of the plaque for a moment. “Is the fountain still running?”
“The … my apologies … what?” Hefertus asks, looking at the other man like he is mad.
We are all staring at Sir Coriand together. Does he not understand? We are trapped in this underground grave like bugs under a bucket. There is no way out. We are dead men and women already and we know it.
“Yes,” the Vagabond says carefully. She’s a little white around the lips. “There’s still water pouring through it.”
“Well, that’s alright then,” Sir Coriand says.
“Indeed,” Sir Sorken echoes heartily.
“I don’t see how.” The Majester sounds wary. He’s speaking the way you speak to madmen.
“Oh, well if the engineers who built this place figured out how to keep the water running even after the whole room turned — and trust me, that’s a feat — then they planned for another way out. We’ll find it eventually.”