Chapter Three She Whom I Have Known #3
Maude was looking up at the sky with the same oddly focused intensity she’d worn hours ago.
“Six gods. One of coin, one of knowledge, one of strength, one of intuition, one of love, and one of death. But that story is a lie—they were not gods. They were just folk of the hamlets, sustained by magic, made strange and perverse by time and the notion that they were the only sacred things in an unholy world.” She ran her thumb over the handle of her axe.
“We killed them. It should have been over after that. But power always has to go somewhere…”
A prickle climbed up my back.
“Your eyes are like theirs. Like a Diviner’s. Touched by death.”
I reached up and touched my cheek, just below my eye. “And what’s a Diviner?”
She gave a low chuckle.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just… you never asked me questions. Even when you were a boy. You’ve had a clear disdain for how things worked in the Stonewater Kingdom for as long as I’ve known you.”
“And how long is that?”
“A great many years.”
I scrutinized her in the dim light. “You’re not my mother, are you?”
“Take it easy, you shit. I’m not that old.”
“Sorry.”
Maude reached out. Patted my shoulder. “Family is what you make it.”
“And I’ve got you?” I nodded at the snoring gargoyle. “And him?”
She nodded, then unfolded, lying down on the grass with her hands beneath her head. “And you have a woman.”
My back went straight.
“She’s fearless. Valiant and prideful and full of heart. Strong as an ox, too.” I heard a smile in her voice. “Strong enough to knock you down, anyway.”
Fuck me if my face didn’t go hot. “What’s her name?”
“Sybil Delling.”
My lips parted. Sybil Delling. The name tasted smooth, sweet. “And she knows me? She remembers me?”
“Very well, I imagine.”
Then it dawned on me. “So where is she?”
Maude was silent a long moment. “She doesn’t know that you’ve woken.”
“That’s not an answer.”
More silence.
“Maude.”
“She’s with the king.”
Maude rolled over, and I pressed my body down into the grass and shut my eyes.
For the first time since I’d woken on the tor, I did not readily succumb to sleep.
When I did, it was fitful, and I woke as I did before—hands fisting the grass.
Only now I wasn’t curled in on myself, shaking.
I was on my back, heart kicking, teeth pressed into my bottom lip, painfully hard in my pants.
I looked into my mind, desperate for whatever dream or memory I’d lost, certain it was of her, Sybil Delling, she whom I knew—had known—and found…
Nothing.
My voice eviscerated the morning solemnity, splitting the gray, damp hour before dawn wide open. “You said we’re running away from a little boy in his big gold crown. That’s the king, yes?”
Maude startled awake, and so did the gargoyle, who put a hand to his chest and shrieked so loudly a dozen mourning doves took flight from a gorse bush. “Prithee, Bartholomew, do not shout! We’re in a church.”
Maude gripped her axe. Looked around. Saw no threat—save the expression twisting over my brow. “Pith, Rory.”
“This king.” I pointed to the gargoyle’s missing wing. “He did that.” I jabbed a finger into my left side, where the faintest stain of blood still remained. “And this—yes? He’s the one who killed me?”
Maude’s eyes dropped to my side. She turned to the gargoyle, and they shared a look I did not understand, only that it made the corners of Maude’s mouth drop. “Yes.”
“And she’s with him now. She’s with the king.” I didn’t know my voice could do that. Fall so low it scraped and rasped. “Sybil Delling.” My woman. “With my killer.”
It felt like an age before Maude spoke again.
“There is a long gold chain in Traum, encircling the hamlets, tethering them to the Omens, to Aisling Cathedral. Once, that chain was held by the abbess of that cathedral. Now, it rests in the king’s hands.
Only he has replaced the cathedral with Sybil, and tethered her to himself.
” Her throat worked. “Sybil’s the Diviner.
A dreamer who once told the tale of false gods so that the Stonewater Kingdom might have something to believe in.
A holy symbol. Kings come and go, crowned and uncrowned by the nobility—but symbols live forever.
With Sybil, captive at his side, along with the support he bought from the powerful families of Traum, the king’s wealth and legacy and authority will be absolute.
The only thing that ever stood in his way—”
She looked at the gargoyle. At me. “Were his friends.”
My hands began to shake at my sides.
“We will find a way to come up against him,” Maude said.
“The name Bauer means something yet. I’ll wield it against the king—I’ll find a way to lower his estimation among the nobles.
As for you… you heard those women; Traum is a place of portents, of superstitions, of dreams. And with you, your eyes just like Sybil’s… ”
Maude put a hand on the gargoyle’s shoulder, her other on mine. “Let death be a rebirth. We’ll return to Coulson Faire. Find a way to get the loom stone, get your memory back. We’ll help Sybil. Put her back in armor and place a hammer in her hand once more.”
When dawn broke over the moors, it painted Maude Bauer a violent orange hue. “And the four of us will bring Benedict Castor the Third to his knees. One. Last. Time.”