Chapter 19 #2
“Like we found the cup?” the Inquisitor asks snidely, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. His jab fails to find its mark.
“We’ll probably find that, too.”
“And how will we find any of these things,” Sir Owalan scoffs, as if he is not the one who had locked us all into this mausoleum. “We can’t even get out of this place!”
“Well,” Sir Coriand says, looking slightly surprised, as if he’s been asked by a child how he knew a goat was a goat. “I’d advise checking in places we haven’t yet looked. Like that door you opened.”
We all look at each other, but Sir Owalan is the first to break.
He bolts away from the charnel hall we’re in and dashes down the mosaic floor, one lone figure dwarfed to insect-like size under the ponderous white statues now charcoal in the fainter light coming through the carved holes of the bas-relief wall.
“Has it occurred to anyone else that this place was built at far too large a scale?”
The Inquisitor says so little that I turn to look at him, wondering if he means something deeper by that, but he says nothing more, simply looking up at the demon in the ceiling, a thoughtful expression gracing his face.
It’s only when I notice that his long white hair is swirling a little that I realize there’s a slight breeze still drifting into the monastery from the holes in the carved bas-relief.
“Too large a scale for what?” Sir Coriand asks, as if he’s looking over blueprints instead of stuck in a trap.
The Majester and the High Saint take one look at one another and then hurry after Sir Owalan. That’s probably for the best. None of us should be alone down here.
Hefertus turns to me, panting. “Things have gone very badly, brother.”
I nod as I shoot a glance at the Vagabond.
Her braid is slightly askew and her cheeks flushed from running, mouth screwed up into a worried knot.
She nods back at me, once, sharply, acknowledging the situation.
She doesn’t seem too rattled from her ordeal earlier — or this one now.
Perhaps I am the only one who finds this so unsettling.
“I think we should stick together,” she says. “Whatever killed the Seer is not me, and it’s still out there.”
“You don’t think it was a human?” Hefertus asks her. “One of us?”
“Do you?”
He runs a hand over his tidy beard. “I don’t know. I’m not certain of anything now. I’m glad I wore all my pearls, though. If I’m going to die, I’d like to be buried with them.”
“That’s really all they’re good for in the end,” the lady paladin says with a wry smile.
“You don’t think they bring out my eyes?”
The Prince Paladins lose their common sense first. Who thinks of pearls when they are trapped in a ruin?
“I’d still like to see to the dead,” I say quietly. The other two nod, looking around, but there’s nowhere to put them.
“You’ll need a broom and a shovel if you want to move the Hand,” Hefertus says grimly, and I could swear the dog’s bark of response sounds just like a laugh. “I don’t know what to do for them, Adalbrand. We are too poorly equipped.”
“We could drape my cloak over the Seer,” the Vagabond suggests.
I shake my head. With all of our supplies gone, we must make use of what we have. All of it.
“I think I have the pattern memorized.” Sir Coriand sounds pleased. “Once we figure out how to solve it, we can spin the room again.”
“Perhaps you could wait before you open any more locked doors,” Hefertus says.
“And if you have a lantern in those packs your golems brought, that would not go amiss,” the Inquisitor agrees.
His eyes are haunted and I wonder what he sees in this place.
Does he see it as I do? A prison and a grave?
Or as Sir Owalan, the High Saint, and the Majester do — a challenge given them by the God?
“We did have a lantern, I think,” Sir Sorken says. “And I think we’d all do a little better with a cup of tea. Let’s go find the golems, hmm?”
As we make our way toward the stairs, Sir Coriand shows us the gears hidden in the mosaic pattern of the tile.
The one we’re walking over is larger than the bases of some towers.
“You are all certain you didn’t notice the gears from the stairs?
” he asks, looking at us as if we are all terribly dull.
“I was more focused on the demon in the ceiling,” the Vagabond says.
She’s screwed her face up into a brave look.
I wonder if she doubts whether she will survive this.
Doubt, after all, is her flaw. Is that the result of the death of her mentor shaking her belief or has she always been on the edge, believing but not believing, driven by doubts like a ship before the wind? I’d like to know.
“What demon?”
“The one hanging over us like a thundercloud waiting to break.” She points at the ceiling and the Engineers exchange a look I can’t quite decipher.
“Tea. Promptly,” Sir Sorken says.
As we hurry past, my eyes drift down the new hallway. It’s like the other — long, with inset shelves, but that’s all I can see at a glance. It hardly matters. I’m sure I’ll end up walking through it eventually.
“I want to thank you, Sir Adalbrand,” Victoriana says out of nowhere. She’s so close her shoulder brushes mine and for a moment that’s all I can feel. I hadn’t noticed her joining me.
I turn to look at her and just like always, her wide brown eyes make my heart stutter for a moment.
What a gift it would be to be an innocent man and be free to lose myself in those eyes.
To try to win their smile. As it is, I am gentle in how I respond, careful to neither demand what is not mine, nor offer what I do not have.
“No thanks are needed, Lady Paladin.”
“You saved my life.” Her voice is full of things she does not say. It is thick and heavy like crystalized honey.
“You were innocent.” I try to strain the longing from my voice. I do not know if I succeed. “Anyone would do the same.”
She snorts a laugh and the tension of the moment evaporates in a shared wry smile.
“I think perhaps you failed to notice, Sir Knight, but no one else did the same. In fact, I was quite certain they would have lapped up my blood like dogs when Sir Kodelai was finished with me.”
“I don’t like blood,” Hefertus says from behind us. “Never had a taste for it.”
When I turn to look at him, he lifts a brow at me, his eyes all judgment. My cheeks heat. He’s right, of course. I have no business talking to the Vagabond. I am only making things worse. By the time I school my face to neutrality, she has turned to the Engineers.
“I kept these books,” she is saying, trying to get Sir Coriand’s attention. “We found them in the rooms but I forgot about them when the Seer died.”
“Are those what you were smuggling under that horrific excuse for a cloak?”
“They’re all variations of the same thing, I think, but your Ancient Indul is much better than mine,” she soldiers on. “There are diagrams.”
“Diagrams?”
That has his attention. He snatches the books as we reach the golems.
“Tea, I think, Cleft,” Sir Sorken says as Sir Coriand spreads the books out and begins to study them side by side. They both crouch over the find like crows over a day-old kill.
“They are the same! Look, these people were all creating something. But what? And the way they arrive there is entirely different. Do you think it’s the same thing that they’re making?” Sir Coriand is entranced.
“The sketches are very similar if they aren’t,” Victoriana says. “See this one compared to that one. And what is this word? Is it not ‘Saints’ as we see on the plaque just there?”
She points to the plaque at the bottom of the stairs. Sir Coriand looks at her quizzically. He’s as taken with her as I am, I think. I can admit my weakness there. As old as he is, and as distracted, still he would be a better fit for her than this broken paladin is.
I watch the golems suspiciously as they carefully draw wooden cups from the bags they are holding and then put leaves in them with huge, clunky fingers.
Cleft — less horrible, as he is made of stone — pours the still-steaming water into the cups to brew tea.
Has so little time passed that the water is still hot? Can that really be? I glance where the windows used to be and I feel, suddenly, as though I am being crushed in a vise, as though I am trapped in rock, locked in a cage. I can’t quite catch a breath.
Hefertus is chuckling over something Sir Sorken said.
The Inquisitor is examining the lanterns suspiciously, taking tea absentmindedly from the hulking golem.
The eyes of both golems burn and burn as if they, too, are imprisoned within stone.
And for a moment the world swims. I catch the Vagabond’s eye and the corner of her lip turns up conspiratorially, and my breath catches. And I am well again for a moment.
Lord have mercy. God have mercy.
I exhale the prayer and draw in a long breath, accepting the tiny wooden cup from the massive rock hand that offers it to me. When I look up into that eye, it flickers. What big hands you have, Cleft. You could crush the life out of me with them. And yet here you are, handing me tea.
“Cunning little cups, aren’t they?” Sir Sorken says, looking up at me as if he sensed my thoughts. “I had Cleft carve them for you yesterday when you were down here.”
I am drinking tea made by what is either a trapped soul or a soulless abomination in a cup that he carved. I feel ill.
“Drink your tea, Sorrowful Saint,” Sir Sorken says to me, a note of mockery in his voice. “Stop fretting about a morality you built all by yourself.”
Just that one jab hits me in the wrong spot.
It stirs up my anxiety at being sealed in a tomb, my longing for what is not mine to have, my ethical dilemma at working with one who does not share my convictions, and my concern that the God is not listening when I call.
I’m about to snap at him but once again we are arrested by the sound of feet slapping down the corridor.
It’s Sir Owalan. His eyes are wide and he’s sprinting, his filmy robes fluttering around him like the wings of a moth. Carefully, I set my tea down.
“You have to come,” Sir Owalan calls when he’s close enough for his voice to travel. “All of you! Now!”
“We’re drinking tea, my boy,” Sir Sorken says in his naturally booming voice.
“It’s important,” Sir Owalan gasps.
“Has someone died?” I’m instantly tense. My hand is on my pommel before I realize it.
Owalan shakes his head, puffing for air.
“Tea is important,” Sir Sorken says firmly. “Shall I have the golems pour you a cup? I think you could use it, hmm?”
“No tea,” Sir Owalan gasps. “We might have found the Cup of Tears. But we need all of you if we are to attain to it.”