Chapter 36
Chapter thirty-six
Lycandor
The Fear
“Our chappellums and templums are more precious than armies. More valuable to us than Thromarra’s fields of wheat, its forests, its flocks. Do you know why?”
It appeared I’d been plunged into the hottest of pits, not the catacombs.
My nose, my eyes, the roof of my mouth burned with waves of raw longing.
It was agony, almost unbearable this day, the stagnant air home to the relics laced thicker than I’d ever smelt it.
It crept into my pores; a thousand needles stabbing every inch of me, numbing my senses until it consumed.
Great beyond, I wanted it. Needed it. More than I had in cycles, in decades.
It had grown worse as of late, for reasons I couldn’t fathom.
I swallowed, fire pouring down my throat.
“It’s where we inspire devotion, Father.” My voice was steady, despite every word akin to spitting coals. “It’s where we conquer hearts and minds.”
“You are mistaken.” The High Druid left my side, stalking over to the rug at the foot of his chaise.
Five young children sat there, no older than three or four winters, playing with dolls—the chosen few taken from Dendra’s slums, destined to be shaped into acolytes or sisters.
They giggled and tumbled among his wares, one of them clanging a spoon against an overturned grace dish, beating it like a drum.
I tried to discern whether my nausea was the result of the bloodstone or something far worse.
He’d always had a fondness for children…
“Mine!” A young lad with shaggy, dark hair snatched another girl’s doll.
She was a small thing, her blonde curls matted thickly at the back.
Later, I would ask a sister to brush it for her, since I could do little else.
“No, no, no. Baby mine, mine!” the little girl wailed, clinging to its arm.
They pulled the doll taut, stretching its stitching.
Through his chain-mailed pall, my father tutted.
“Now, now, children. What be the matter? This is a templum, not a fighting pit.” They paused their tug-o-war, shuffling on their bare feet.
What a horror he must be to them, a man of metal, his red grin peeping through the hole in his maw.
“Speak, dears. Or I shall take the doll and be done with it.” Gone was the High Druid of Dendra, and in his place, the rational parent, words clipped but somehow warm, and all the worse for it.
If they did not prove to be worthy of the roles he had assigned them, he would grind their bodies with the rest of them, snort their limbs after supper.
“Willur take it from me.” The girl sniffled, wiping the back of her hand against her dribbling nose.
Handkerchiefs, too. I’ll have the sisters bring handkerchiefs.
I crinkled my own, trying—and failing—to banish the growing stench of grace.
“Liar!” the boy accused, tugging on the doll and thus reigniting their struggle.
My father laughed. “Oh, stubborn, both of ye. Here.” He grabbed the doll. It took a moment, but both let go. I stilled my knee before it could fidget. I’d need pain soon, and lots of it, for nothing else would temper the craving.
“You must learn to share.” With that, he ripped the doll down the middle, parting its eyes, its chest, and its legs in two.
The stuffing seeped from its belly, littering the carpet with straw.
He presented one half to the boy, the other to the girl.
They stared, wide eyed, before bursting into tears.
I stepped forward.
“Ah, ah, ah.” He cupped their faces, one gloved hand each, wiping at their tears with his thumbs, gently.
So very gently. “This is justice, young things. You both demanded your dues, and now look…this be the fruit. Take your half and go play.” With a shared glance, the children took their mutilated halves and returned to the floor.
The girl hugged her piece to her chest, pretending to soothe it to sleep.
Father rose, the movement an ordeal, his knees stiff and rigid.
“‘Tis not hearts or minds we need to conquer, those are but trifles,” he continued, pressing his shoulder to mine, our armour clanging with the contact. I dug my feet into the rug, imploring them to stay rooted. “Rather, their souls, Lycandor. The fruit of their being. The seed of their essence.”
A part of me, a depraved part of me, had the sudden urge to swipe one of the relics lining the walls and lick it.
“And what does it take to barter a soul?” he asked, unbeknownst to my struggles. “Not the promise of love, or happiness, or material gain—souls care little for such menial things. In the chappellum, in the templum, we offer them hope.”
“Hope?” My cursed knee trembled.“We must monopolise the hope. Hope can come from nowhere but us, because if it does”—he returned a wave to a child who beamed at him from the chaise—“then souls may be inclined to leave and seek hope in pastures anew, leaving us with barren fields and empty coffers, nothing left to harvest.” His elevated hand placed itself on my shoulder.
“And so, Lycandor, we must rely on the fear that there is no hope without us. Fear is more powerful than love, penance a greater instructor than mercy. If we wish to keep our place as gods amongst men, then we must act like it, for what god cares for the plight of an ant? It matters only if they deliver their dues, return with the leaf, and offer up their morsel to the colony.” His grip tightened, denting the metal.
“In return, the ants are spared desertion. There is no worse fate than abandonment; even a cruel god is better than none.”
I unclenched my teeth. “Your point, Father?”
He released me, my pauldron warped by the shape of his fingers, the metal now digging into my bone. “The grey laurel’s blood…nothing to report?”
Straightening, the burning of grace muted to a broil.
“She bleeds like all the rest,” I stated, a truth in my lie.
“Nothing has had a reaction thus far—not the ash, nor the bark, nor the bloodstone, nor the soil. But are we not patient, Your Eminence? We have lived a long time and have forever to go. These discoveries take time. There is much still I can do.”
“Have you had someone ingest it?”
Her thumb, in my mouth. Her blood, laced with a sweetness that rivalled the grace. The flat of my tongue, licking her palm. “Not yet.”
He reached for a goblet brimming with clear liquor, having grown weary of wine.
“Then get a monk, or a sister. Have them swallow not a drop, but a pint. We may have forever, but patience is not eternal, and you disappoint me, Lycandor.” He loomed closer, pressing harder into my side, his mesh-covered temple resting against my own.
“The grace grows sparse.” He untied the pouch from his side, pinching a small amount of it between gloved fingers, then sniffed, heaving a shuddering breath.
For a moment, I thought I may steal the bag from his hands.
Would I? I could. Just a pinch. “If her blood is poison, then perhaps select a few druids to thin out our ranks. One that’s displeased me of late, Capriche for instance.
” He licked his glove clean of the residue, and my mouth watered.
“Once a tree is restored, we can find other capable bodies to inspire hope in the chappellums, other young souls to shape into the hand of our Lord.” He motioned to the children.
With a smile like a bleeding vein, he laughed, spreading his red lips thin through the hole in his veil. The patter of tiny feet had him depositing the bag on the table—where I could take it, so easily.
“Look, look, Father! A heart!”
The babe hurried over, cradling a rock. Approaching the High Druid, he held it aloft, like the rarest of treasures, and presented it to him.
I winced at the sight of the jagged shard of bloodstone, chipped from a relic.
I could snatch it. Swallow it, perhaps. Or take it to…
“Oh, how splendid!” Father accepted the gift, holding it to the sconce light.
Beneath the mesh, I bit down on my lip, harder and harder until the need to claw it from his hands no longer blazed.
“What a keen eye you have, Willur.”
“It’s a present.”
“I am honoured, my child, but perhaps we could offer it to the Blood God? Gain His favour?”
The young boy’s head tilted. “I thought we offered ourselves?”
A deep chuckle. “You do little one, you do. And what have I told you?” His hand cupped the boy’s chin.
“It’s an hobor.”
“Honour.”
“Honour,” he repeated slowly, eyes searching for appraisal.
“There’s a good lad. I shall keep this and give it to Him.” He pocketed the rock, patting it with a large hand. “Go and play, Willur. I’m conversing with His Holiness.”
“Yes, Father.”
He tottered off, leaving us alone once more.
“You get them to call you father?” I demanded, rage a balm to the craving.
He scoffed. “Am I not a father to all? ‘Tis harmless, Lycandor. They love me, and I do so love them.” He swiped his tongue along his bottom lip, and the perfume of incense and honey fogged the air, strong enough to war with the grace. Strong enough to make me retch. He did love them. I resisted the urge to spit on the floor. “If your efforts are not fruitful by the morrow, she dies, alongside the others. I’ll have her drowned, face smothered with a cloth… There are endless ways to stop the beating of one’s heart without spilling blood on the floor if we still do not yet know its secrets. ”
I bit down on my tongue hard enough to draw blood, a lick of iron coating my mouth. “Why kill her when there is much to be learned?”
“She is hope—a hope that turns heads. Already there are murmurings. The Dendralis pulpits are loud, but the whispers of gossip are louder. The offerings have stopped, and Thromarra will grow too comfortable. They need fear, Lycandor, fear, for without it, hope becomes a weapon rather than a tool.”
“Too much fear, you turn them feral. Nothing bites quite like a cornered animal.” I dug my fist into my thigh, hard enough to bruise.
I’d run out of time, for without a decree, without a pardon…
there was nothing I could do. “Not enough, and they’ll make mincemeat of us, regardless.
Succumbing be damned, even rock can crumble, and we are not invincible, my son, even though it may seem that way.
” “Not invincible?” I scoffed, knowing if it were the truth, I’d have exploited it long ago.
“What could topple a mountain?”“Or a Cor Tower?” he rebuked.
“Perhaps something that can tremble the earth.” He moved to face me, blocking my view of the chaise and the children who played there.
“She is dangerous, and I’m not fool enough to deny it. ”
“You need to giv—”“Enough!” We stood, nose to nose, chest to chest, mirrors of mesh; one I longed to shatter.
“Has succumbing driven you to madness? What, because you cannot bed her, you want to keep her instead, as if her cunt will ripen like the vine and not shrivel with the rest of her? Her death is inevitable, and you must crush the seed before it can sprout.” He relaxed his shoulders.
“They call you the Butcher, do they not? I had hoped you’d be a scythe, not a cleaver, but it seems you are neither.
And what use have I for a wooden sword? Make no mistake, I will have not a single chink of metal mismoldered in the Dendralis’ link.
Another tree is almost secured. I’m depending on you to organise the crusiax to defend Thromarra if necessary, if they retaliate, as unlikely as that is.
Tonight, someone tastes her blood. If nothing happens in the ‘morrow, she and the others will die. I decree it.”
He turned from me, abandoning our conversation to make for the chaise. A child clambered into his lap, straddling his knee, running a hand along his veil and watching the metal dance.
I found myself staring…and thinking, and craving.
Grace stalking at my heels, I mounted the stairs, hoping, by some unfathomable miracle, that a decree awaited me in my office, some blessed twist of fate and mercy ensuring it had been delivered in the two turns since I had been absent.
All would be well, then. I could take her, take him, through the templum’s belly, out of its bowel, to the ship, to the fane, to sanctuary.
But with no decree, there’d be no town, no village, no godsdamned rock in all Thromarra to smuggle them to.
I would have to watch them die. Her die.
Like all the ones who’d died before, and unable to do a damned thing about it.
I breached the surface and moved through the sanctum, heading towards my office with fool’s hope and a realist’s resolve.
But then, I smelt it—potent, salt-laced, floral.
Fear.
Her fear.