Chapter 21 #3
Sir Sorken is shouting to someone below. The Penitent, I think. At least he’s being helpful.
I follow his gaze and see Sir Owalan stab his belt knife entirely through his forearm. His back arches and his mouth opens in a pained rictus.
I’ve never liked Penitents. They’re always pulling stunts like this, forever acting dramatically to draw the attention of the God.
His arms reach up as if in prayer and my heart is stuck in my chest. I almost forgot they could do that — that the God gives them blessing in proportion to their self-inflicted wounds.
My mouth twists involuntarily. I wish they could keep it to themselves and I wouldn’t have to remember.
Either way, this isn’t an injury I need to concern myself with.
The Penitent can fend for himself with that.
One of the statues tries to hit him, but the blow glances off the Penitent as if it is a feather smacking into him rather than stone.
Though Sir Owalan is clearly in agony, sweat breaking out across his brow and blood flowing from his wound, a second attack also fails to injure him.
He is immune to any assault other than his own.
No need to worry about him. He’s crazy but not in danger. His madness protects him.
Hefertus’s platform is empty.
My heart stutters for a moment and then I see his cup is glowing. He’s solved his puzzle already.
I find him at the organ, playing that melancholy song, golden head down, arms spidered out, lost in his anguished melody.
Though the Saint statues attack from every side, their blows miraculously miss both him and the organ. I sense the power of the God at work there.
Behind him, the floor is cracked, all the vessels crushed to dust, and around the pipe organ there are bits of stonework battered to nothing. I watch as one of the Saints pulls down his stone cowl and throws a hammer at Hefertus.
It whips toward him end over end. I grunt, feeling the blow before it hits my friend. It slams into his skull.
No.
It doesn’t.
It falls to the ground right behind him as if it hit a stone wall where his head is.
A chunk of stone flies up from the floor where the hammer rebounds.
The Prince Paladin can clearly take care of himself. Or the God can. Or something.
I find the Majester next. He’s looking at Hefertus. His hands are up. I see one make a flinging motion and then one of the Saints flings a discus at my friend.
Wait.
He’s controlling that statue. And he’s attacking my friend with it. I feel my mouth form a firm line. Interesting how challenges bring out the heart of people. If it was he who screamed; I don’t have time for his pain.
I hear a shout from below — higher pitched, feminine. My heart is in my throat as I spin.
Victoriana.
She’s not on her platform and her cup isn’t glowing. She either hasn’t figured out the puzzle or she’s not her own adversary and therefore can’t use her own blood. She should take her dog’s blood. There’s an adversary if I’ve ever seen one.
I scan through the bodies and find her standing over her fallen dog. He’s lying at her feet in a clump of fur and blood as she spins and bats at the statues, her braid an inky whip around her, her sword an extension of her arm.
I knew that creature would get her in trouble; I just thought it would be the perpetrator, not the victim.
What’s she doing halfway to the Inquisitor’s platform?
Oh.
He’s fallen, pinned under a broken statue. It’s in three pieces and the Inquisitor is under one of them. I do not know if he lives. It seems his qualms about this place were justified.
Saints and Angels. He must be the source of the original scream, and she’s trying to get to him.
Of course she is. She has more honor than anyone else here — and I include Hefertus in that, because my dear friend would rather play music as everyone around him dies than lift a hand to help.
I need to get to her.
Even as I think that, I see the High Saint cutting through the chaos, a statue clearing space before him and another keeping the rest of them off his back.
Both these Saints he controls are slow and lumbering.
How are they doing that? He doesn’t have the Majester’s way with command, but he’s figured out a rudimentary system.
I don’t have time to discover what has given them power over the denizens of this place. Perhaps they merely asked and were granted their requests.
I need to move.
Something catches the edge of my peripheral vision and my breath is jagged in my chest as my gaze is torn back to the movement.
The Vagabond spins out of the grasp of one adversary, kicking up a foot and pivoting in the tidiest spin attack I think I’ve seen.
She executes it perfectly, fearlessly. Her quick strike hits the flat of a stone sword and it shatters.
I haven’t seen her in real action before.
Apparently, she was holding back in the friendly bout up top.
This Vagabond Paladin could hold her own against any fighter in the capital. I’m not entirely sure I could win if we turned on each other. This Vagabond is a fearsome thing indeed.
I’m impressed. I don’t mean to be, but I am.
Her second blow knocks the stone teeth out of a lion. It leaps forward, rearing up on hind legs from where a female Saint with many braids flicks out a stone whip in one hand and holds the lion with the other.
The Vagabond doesn’t hesitate. She spins under the lion and bashes it in the side of the head with both the hilt of her sword and her gauntleted hand.
On her way past, she kicks up onto the lion’s haunch, spins into a double-footed kick, and both her hands wrap around her sword hilt.
The stone whip catches her across the pauldron but she grits her teeth and lands her kick, knocking the Saint’s stone head off her shoulders.
She’s bold and powerful, skilled and agile.
But she’s only one woman.
More enemies closing in on every side and she won’t leave the dog. She circles it, batting back the enemy one at a time. She can’t hold on like that.
Grimly, I grab my second chain and tug hard, releasing the ratchet and sending my platform careening downward. Hopefully, there’s no one beneath me. I can’t stop this descent and I won’t.
I know one thing — whether we find the cup or not, whether we find a way out or not — I will not be whole if the Vagabond dies. I may never be whole again.
I crash to the ground and hear a cracking sound as the stone shard breaks away and shatters. Pain rips through my shins. I ignore it.
A sword is in front of my eyes before the dust settles, thrusting downward toward me. I use the Vagabond’s clever idea and hit it on the flat. It shatters in the most satisfying way, but I have no time to enjoy the victory.
I pivot, leap over an enemy, and almost crash into the Penitent, my heart in my throat.
He spins, looks at me wild-eyed without comprehension, and then spins away again, a whirlwind of movement and violence, kicking and lunging through the white, perfectly formed stone bodies surrounding us.
I feel like a child among murderous adults. They dwarf me, unfeeling, unknowing, bent on my destruction.
I try to do what the Majester has done and command them with my mind.
Move! I roar with all my thoughts, but nothing happens. Whatever trick is at play for him and for the High Saint has sidestepped me. I don’t have time to figure it out when these statues threaten everything.
I clamber over the body of a fallen stone Saint — I think she was a virgin sacrifice or something. Her pinched waist is the perfect place to plant my boot between the swell of her hip and the sweep of her rib cage.
I’m pushing up and over her cold stone flesh when I see the Majester raise his sword over his head and bring it down in both hands, tip pointed at a place between his feet. It’s not until it lands that I see what he is striking.
It’s the throat of the Inquisitor, pinned under the stone.
What has he done? I swallow down bile.
This is murder, pure and simple. No true paladin would commit such an unholy act.
My guttural roar of fury bubbles up at the same moment that the Majester is kicked from behind. He stumbles forward, spins, sword up, and then throws himself at his attacker — the Vagabond Paladin.
Of course.
She’s crying — tears streaming down her face — but her lips are clenched together and her eyes are narrowed in rage. Her strikes are fast and sure.
Her sword hits his in the familiar ring of steel on steel, striking at the exact moment that a crescendo peaks in the passionate music Hefertus is spinning from his haunted instrument.
Perhaps he is finding his cadence in the rhythm of our deaths.
There’s something poetic about having my last moments set to the melody of a friend’s tears.
The Majester’s blade slides down the Vagabond’s, locking them in a clinch for a half second, but it’s long enough for the High Saint to suddenly be there.
“Majester. Beggar. Don’t move.”
The High Saint’s voice is calm and precise but loud enough that I can hear it even as I sidestep a fresh attack from a female Saint with a light veil drawn round her head and hanging down to her knees.
The fabric of the Saint’s veil is carved to be translucent so that the swells of her cheeks and her wicked smile are easy to make out while she still appears veiled.
It’s artful. And terrifying. And not holy at all.
I breathe out as the combatants freeze in place. Good. They will listen to reason.
It’s only when the High Saint slides in, slips a cup under the Beggar’s eye, swipes a tear, then flicks a knife across her cheek and takes her blood with it that I realize he has used his boon from the God against them.
“Go in peace,” he intones, making the sign of the God self-righteously. At least he didn’t kill her for it. I should be thankful for that, right? Count my blessings? I am counting only how I might get revenge, a cut for a cut, a wound for a wound.