Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
Ashara
The Druid of Bones
Two sharp knocks clanged on the iron door to our backs.
“He lives,” the Butcher whispered, retreating to the door. “But you’d wish him dead if you knew what awaits.” Unlatching the bolts, the metal clinked alongside the thump of my heart.
Two paxiams entered, resting their spears on the frame to cup their hands.
Heads dipped, they took to their knees. I did neither, pressing a palm to my mouth, lest I say another blasphemous word and suffer a spear to the belly.
The same belly now doused in a wash of frigid relief, its budding heat trampled by the Butcher’s admission.
“It is time, Your Holiness,” one revealed from the flagstone, head bent.
“Very well.” Swiping the parchment from his desk, the Butcher rolled it into a cylinder, letting the blackened wax of a taper drip along its edge.
Pressing a thumb to the hot splodge, he sealed it, handing it to one of the paxiams. “Once you have escorted the laurel back to the chamber, take this to His Eminence.” The shorter one took the scroll, stowing it in his breastplate.
The Butcher gestured towards Osric’s slumped body. “Druid Duncan’s murderer, penanced, executed, and confe—ah, fuck.”
He snatched the parchment back from the paxiam and cracked the fresh seal. Taking Osric’s limp hand, he dragged a blood-slick finger across the bottom in a single rough loop.
“Confession secured,” the druid finished, releasing Osric’s hand and resealing the scroll before tucking it into the paxiam’s armour.
“Have some monks collect the body and hang it over the reach, and have the acolytes spread word of a national fast. Nothing but porridge and well-water until the last Seventh Day, as a collective due for this heinous act.” He thumped the guard’s breastplate, sending him staggering.
“And be sure to remind His Eminence of the edict.”
“Edict, Your Holiness?”
“It’s detailed in there.” His voice lowered. “The edict to have all paxiams on duty this night flogged until lash strikes bone. A mercy, considering their negligence cost a druid his life.”
The paxiam gulped, plume wagging as he nodded.
“Escort this one back to the chamber.” The Butcher jerked his helm to where I was propped at the desk, already reaching for his armour beneath it.
I struggled to move, pinned down by some invisible weight as if I were dressed in iron, not he.
“Yes, Your Holiness,” the taller one confirmed. “Druid Falstaff and his acolytes are preparing the site. His Holiness requested the sanctifying tool.” Head bowed and eyes to the floor, his syllables shook, just like the hand pressed to his chest.
“Do I look like an errand boy?” Breastplate fastened, the Butcher padded towards him.
“No, Your Holiness. Acolyte Pi—” A hand shot to the paxiam’s neck, slamming his metal-clad body against the door with such force I thought the hinges might buckle.
Spluttering, the guard’s face twisted as the Butcher’s grip tightened.
I leaned slightly to the left, watching his colour shift from oat milk to a ripened tomato.
“Tell Falstaff to send an acolyte to get his godsforsaken tool. Command me something again, as if I were a pup to heel, and that crimson armour you wear will be as good as paper once I decide to tear out your bowels and feed them to you. Tell me, paxiam, have you ever tasted your own shit?”
“N-no, Your Holiness,” he croaked, watery eyes shifting to the mess of Osric’s body over the druid’s shoulder.
Releasing him, the Butcher marched to his cloak, pinning it to his gorget. “Out.”
Somehow, my legs obeyed, carrying me towards the paxiams. Their eyes flashed with that familiar need to strike at something after being struck, like I was the leg of a table where they’d each stubbed a toe.
“Remember, laurel…first in line.” I turned in time to see him pull on a fresh pair of gloves. “Butchers and mercy are old friends,” he said, voice hushed, as he tipped his helm towards Osric. “I tell you as a kindness.”
I crossed the threshold silent, having given him enough words already. Through the slitted windows lining the turnpike, a streak of crimson scored the horizon, the blackness of night bleeding to red.
The paxiam was right. It was time.
***
Guided with haste back to the chamber, sunrise nipped at our heels.
The templum morphed to a smear, faces blurring, colours congealing, as if I were trapped in a fever dream like the ones I’d had as a child.
I’d blasphemed to the Butcher and lived to tell the tale. Demetri was alive. Osric was dead.
And none of it mattered. None of it mattered at all.
Laurellian women parted, allowing me to drift back to my rumpled nest of cushions. The heathens were asleep, or appearing to sleep, curled up like cats, Esioul’s small frame still missing from their ranks.
Facing the window, everything melted away but the rising sun along the eastern horizon.
It was beautiful, viciously so. Pupils fixed on its centre, I watched as it slowly consumed the night, reds, pinks, and oranges burning away the inky blues one cloud at a time.
So mesmerised by it, despite scenting the iron-laced tang in the air, I failed to notice the acolytes.
Shaven heads and crimson robes funnelled into the chamber.
“Make sure you’re first in line.”
I pressed a cushion to my stomach as they circled us, wishing it were Demetri’s hand instead.
Rising to my feet, knees mercifully steady, I held my ground while the laurels moved deeper into the centre, careful to avoid the acolytes’ paths.
They stilled once they manned every wall, the barbed knot of their belts swinging between their legs.
Hands cupped at their middles, they stared straight through us, eyes fixed on the windows at our backs, as if we were already ghosts.
“Kneel for His Holiness, Druid Falstaff of the Rites,” trumpeted a paxiam by the door.
Creaking open, a druid entered, his dark form masked in smoke. Perfumed smoke.
Incense dissipating, two thin, angular spikes pierced through the mist, needles compared to the twisted horn of Capriche’s, or the knives of the Butcher.
Other than the helm, this druid wore no armour, dark robes hanging from his arms like wound dressings, the shape of his bones jutting from under the cloth.
Suspended from a chain at his waist, a thurible smoked with the heavy scent of incense, its coils curling upwards in flat, cloying strings.
It swung to and fro, following the swing of his hips as a charred, medicinal tang warred with the taint of sweat and soured wine.
His nodular hand, joints protruding from under the black-silk glove, gestured to us. “Laurels, beyond these doors, your pilgrimage to the beyond awaits.” A rarity in Thromarra, for someone’s voice to be brittle and cracked with the markers of age. “Is it not a beautiful morning?”
My palms itched to cover my ears.
“Is this not the most joyous of days?”
Something thrummed through my centre. Something scalding.
“The Blood God looks upon ye with a grateful smile, laurels, despite the atrocity committed in the night.” Cupping two hands to his chest, he mirrored the acolytes.
“Your offering be the cost of protection, the price of Thromarra’s freedom from His plagues.
Though He can be a merciful Lord, He is unyielding in His demands. For Blood Demands Blood.”
Mouth hidden by the same chain veil worn by all druids, I could hear his smile nonetheless…and taste the poison within it.
“For Blood Demands Blood.” My lips moved wordlessly. The effort from the rest was hollow, syllables crushed by the heavy burden of knowing what came next.
“Laurels.” The druid’s voice twisted from adoring to clipped. Tutting, he wagged a skinny finger to where our bodies were thickest. “Thou art capable of more.”
The red heat that pricked at my ribs turned colder, growing thorns. I clutched at my heart, fingers clawing the linen, having had the sudden urge to rip it from my chest and throw it into the hearth.
“Louder and with cheer! FOR BLOOD DEMANDS BLOOD!” Falstaff roared, as the acolytes toyed with their belts.
“Blood Demands Blood!” we yelled, the threat of an iron-spiked knot persuasion enough, even for ghosts.
“Henceforth, thou art bidden to follow the revered customs and traditions of the Final Rite. I shalt shepherd thee on this path, wherein we honour these sacred turns by vowing our silence, as is His demand.” He paused, rotating his horned helm to survey the chamber.
“Do not dawdle; do not rush. Keep to the rhythm of the acolytes and paxiams by your side, facing only forwards, never back. For there is only onward to the beyond.” Releasing his hands, they fanned outwards, as if to embrace us.
“Do not fear what is to come, my children. Such a blessing it is! Such a bounty we have this day!” He clapped, threading his fingers.
“The Blood God hath blessed me with absolution, cherished laurels. One touch from my hand, and your sins shalt melt away like a spring morning’s frost. Come.
” He beckoned a woman closest to the doors, a slight thing, hair the colour of dormouse fur.
My stomach dropped on her behalf. Nudged by another, she inched towards where he lurked, neck bent and face masked by her hair.
Once kneeling, he placed a gloved palm to her crown, the tips of his fingers disappearing into her strands.
“Oh, laurel…” A shuddering breath rattled from beneath the chain veil.
“Such sin, such iniquity.” Her head quaked, trembling under his grasp.
“I absolve thee from it!” She launched backwards, head hitting the parquet with a thud.
I winced, a hiss escaping through my front teeth.
Another laurel made to help her before two paxiam spears blocked her path. The dormouse laurel yelped, clutching her nape where a thin trickle of blood wept onto her shoulders and gown.
“Thou art most welcome,” Falstaff crooned, the two points of his helm angled to where she struggled to rise. “Once your due is rendered to the Blood God, the Other will spare ye the pits.” His voice raised, its edges errated. “Respect the Rite, laurels, and I shalt absolve thee, too.”
“I thank you, Your Holiness,” she managed, retreating on shaky legs to her space on the floor.
“A line!”
The paxiams and acolytes closed ranks, thinning our numbers until we stood one behind the other, entrenched between them.
“The first. The first. The first. Make sure you’re the first.”
The Butcher’s command rang in my ears over the shuffling of skirts and tapping of soles, laurels scrambling to find a gap in the queue.
I backed up to the window, determined to do the opposite.
Eyes tracing Falstaff, flickering between his horns of metal and absolving hand, I made pits’ well sure I was the last. I would look.
I would watch for all the times I hadn’t. One final penance before the very end.