A Season of Rendings Read online

  "I'm sorry I'm late," she said. "I was held back, but I need to speak with Keeper Micah at once."

  "He's not here," the initiate said.

  "Yes, he is. Where are they? Down below?" She started toward the catacomb entry, hidden behind the altar.

  "Mother, you can't―" The initiate reached for her and Simon interposed himself, pushing the boy's hand away. "Please, he's not here."

  It had been twelve years since Micah had shown her the crypts beneath Alridaan. It was shortly after he'd become the temple's Keeper, and she still remembered how proud he'd been to have his own parish. A panel on the altar's rear side hid the entrance, but was it the one with the mosaic of Halagon, Josiah Gregor's Preserver? Or the one showing the God's Star? And she recalled a hidden release, but had it been at the altar's base, or just behind the—

  Ah. She found the catch, and the panel showing the God's Star clicked open.

  "Perhaps I should go first," Simon said.

  "No." Her creaking spine threatened revolt as she sank down to squeeze herself into the passage. "No, that's all right, Simon. You can close up behind me." She levered herself carefully through the gap, her feet eventually setting on to formed stone. She invoked a quick clericlight from her palm, illuminating a cramped, brick tunnel which snaked downward. After Simon joined her and closed the door, she followed it.

  The short passage opened into a mid-sized antechamber, where the ceiling finally gained enough height that she could stand without ducking. Micah and his Preserver, along with a dozen other clerics, had gathered in a circle there. One door studded the back wall, leading deeper into the tombs.

  "Angelica," Micah said. A sigh of relief shuddered through the group. "We thought―"

  "Never mind that," she said, crossing to him. "We have to leave Keswick. Tonight. All of us." Oh God, Takra! She couldn't leave the girl alone with that monster. She would have to go back to Majesta for her before they set out.

  "What? Why? What's happened?"

  "They've sent Bishop Marcus to Keswick." This triggered a ripple of apprehension in the gathered clerics. "You've heard of this Convocation the Father called? They are—right now, in Tal'aden—they're rooting out everyone sympathetic to Matthew's teachings. None of the clerics who came are being allowed to leave until it's finished. I don't know how many will die, but Marcus—they sent him to do the same thing here." She grabbed Micah's shoulders. "He's starting tomorrow, Micah. There's no time."

  "Did they send support with him?" Micah asked.

  "I don't know! I'm sure he has some, at least, plus whatever Shephatiah can muster." Why wasn't he scared? Why weren't they already running?

  "This pushes up our timeframe," Micah said to the gathered clerics. "We'll need to act tonight, instead of waiting."

  "What timeframe?" Angelica pressed. "What are you talking about?

  "Not of all us agreed to an attack," one of the clerics, a young deacon, said. "We can't just―"

  "You heard the Mother!" another threw back. "Why do you think Marcus came? Half of us could be dead tomorrow!"

  "Peace!" Micah shouted. The tumult died down. "We fight tonight. There's no more time for discussion. This is our window—now, while so much of the Tribunal is still at Tal'aden. Once they return, the chance is gone."

  "What do you plan to do?" Angelica glanced around the group. She and Micah were the only bishops. A few had their abbot's chains. The others had even lower rank than that. None of them, save she and Micah, had Preservers. "An attack? Have you lost your mind?"

  "If we take them by surprise―"

  Bishop Marcus cut him off. "I'm afraid that chance has passed." Marcus's two Preservers—one tall, one broad and muscular—crowded through the doorway, followed by the Justicar Galen Wick and the Tribunal bishop himself.

  They followed me here. Angelica's courage crumbled. Every hope curled into despair. Oh, God, I'm such a fool.

  Marcus lifted a hand in warning. "You stand on a knife's edge. If I hear one word of prayer, this falls to bloodshed. If that happens, you may be able to kill me—but Alridaan is surrounded, and none of you will escape alive. I don't wish that. I wish only to talk."

  Dogsehk. He'll kill us. She looked at the others, wishing one of them would do something, wishing she had the courage to be the first. But some frail old man stood in Micah's place, now, and the others would do nothing without his lead.

  "Elshaan," Marcus said to Micah's Preserver. "Simon. You are relieved of your oaths, as the Teachings describe. Step away, and be absolved."

  Simon's eyes widened. He glanced at Angelica, his face a naked display of shock or regret.

  Then he left her.

  "Simon!" The cry scraped out of her throat; the single most desperate word she had ever spoken. He ignored it. Elshaan pulled away from Micah, crossing the room just behind Simon. Marcus let both of them past.

  All of it played out like a dream. Some horrible, unbelievable nightmare. Wake up, she thought. I want to wake up.

  Micah took her hand. "Marcus." His voice quivered, tremulous and pathetic. "I take full respon―"

  Marcus snapped his fingers, and the room plunged into silence. His Preservers flowed forward, the broad one to the exit at the back of the antechamber, the taller one to the nearest of Micah's renegade clerics, whose neck he snapped as if preparing tinder. Galen pulled his weapon and ran another through.

  The clerics scattered, some cowering from the tall Preserver and some charging toward Marcus. These Marcus's taller Preserver intercepted: tripping this one, slamming that one into a third. All of it silent as a Rending. If she closed her eyes, she wouldn't even know it was happening.

  No! Angelica screamed, and prayed for Binding—but she didn't, because Marcus's miracle would permit no sound, no prayer. Her tongue moved, but no words came, and her God was too feeble to hear her without them.

  Please! she shrieked. Akir, please! Like Simon a moment before, Akir ignored her.

  Then the air in the room erupted.

  Every part of her ignited: her hair, her dress, her flesh. Agony thrashed her, screaming through every nerve in her body. Still Galen Wick and the taller Preserver swept from person to person, wraiths in the flames, untouched as they completed the business of murder.

  Appalled, burning alive, she ran for the only other exit—the one leading deeper into the crypts—where Marcus's other Preserver intercepted her, and broke her neck.

  26

  i. Lyseira

  The endless blue became an endless white: the familiar consequence of her extravagant miracleworking. Its metallic buzz faded into the constant, rushing wind of numbness. Her brother's shoulder, supporting and guiding her, became the only thing real, the only thing she could rely on. Eventually he helped her lie down, and the world mercifully slipped away.

  Bizarre dreams swarmed her. Jagged shards of memory, raking against each other and drawing blood; an onslaught of unfathomable omens. She endured them one after another, stealing snatches of rest from their teeth, until, finally, Syntal's voice woke her.

  " . . . actually him."

  Reality fluttered back, and she was grateful to receive it: the bloody stain of sunset in the Waste, the unforgiving solidity of stones beneath her back. She even welcomed the stifling heat because she knew what it was, where it came from. She sat up to find herself in the guard tower at Kesselholm, the others—all save Angbar, who still slept—breaking fast with yesterday's manna.

  "By God, it was really him." Syn had cleaned her face, but intimations of blood still lingered on her lips and collar, still murmured in her hair. "I had so many questions! But I couldn't . . ." She growled in frustration, smacked an impotent fist to the stone. "I couldn't remember them!"

  "The traitor Jenseer," Seth said, and Lyseira immediately, finally, recalled: the only Preserver to break his oath of protection, to attack the person he guarded. But the Jenseer they'd met had seemed wise, even friendly. "I just spoke with him, without even . . ." Seth's eyes darkened. "I couldn't rememb
er either, or I'd have killed him where he stood."

  "It wasn't a hallucination," Helix said, "but it couldn't have been real . . . could it?" He looked at Syntal. "Some kind of spell, maybe? But who cast it?"

  "Lar'atul," Syn said. "Don't you remember? He said we were his shades. He manifested us."

  "Whatever that means," Helix said.

  "But it seemed like the spell was out of his control," Iggy put in. Chuckler stood next to him—Iggy must've brought him in while Lyseira slept. A risk, traveling beneath the sun like that, but one they had apparently survived. "We weren't doing what he wanted; he thought we were just gonna disappear after we killed those things."

  "Baltazar," Lyseira breathed. "Baltazar Godson. I couldn't remember. I don't know why I couldn't remember."

  "Who?" Seth asked. "The blue one?"

  "Yes." She was hungry; she had to pee; her head groaned with the dull ache of a night spent on the stone. But this was important, too important. Her rusty mind roused itself and lumbered into a clumsy hunt. "He was . . ." Finally, she caught the thought she'd been chasing since that morning. An elementary fact, very nearly the first piece of Church history any child learned. "He was the first Fatherlord. Founder of the Church. It's in the book of Gilleus. He―" Oh, God. "The scriptures say He put Ethaniel to death for heresy, for . . . for denying His divinity."

  "Ethaniel," Seth said. "The grey one, the old man."

  "The leader," Helix said.

  "It was a lie." Her night of churning dreams suddenly felt tame in comparison to reality. "Ethaniel wasn't the traitor, Baltazar was. He must have . . . turned the others against Ethaniel, taken his title somehow after they Sealed the Pulse. If Baltazar wasn't Akir, if he was just some pretender who overthrew Ethaniel, then . . ."

  The scriptures said Akir had first inhabited Baltazar. Baltazar had chosen his successor, and Akir's divinity had flowed to the new Fatherlord upon Baltazar's death. This passage of Akir's divinity had continued unbroken their centuries, all the way to the current Fatherlord, Caleph Sera.

  Oh, God. Oh, my God. The revelation blasted through her like Revenia's cataclysm.

  "The Fatherlord isn't divine. None of them have been. It's all a lie. Not just the story of Ethaniel, but the divinity, the Church's calling, its authority, it all . . ." Her gorge rose, her body rebelling against her mind. "It's all been―!"

  She scrambled to the back of the room, her throat closing against her rising gorge, as her thoughts dissolved into blank, white screams.

  "So what do we do?" Angbar asked hours later, crouched next to the fire in the dead of night. Even after a full day's sleep, his words kept slurring and one eyelid spasmed constantly—but his mind was still there. He was still him. "I mean, do we have any idea?"

  They'd gone around for hours about the vision, or dream, or spell, or whatever it was that had shown them the world in Lar'atul's final days, and come no closer to a conclusion. They didn't know how or why they had seen it. They didn't even know if it had been real, though all of them felt certain it had been.

  Eventually Syntal had tired of the circular conversation and withdrew to study the fourth wardbook. She'd hoped to find a clue to the fifth, no doubt, and drag all of them along on whatever mad quest demanded her participation next—but now she returned, her eyes troubled. "There's nothing in there," she said. "He always left a clue to the next book's location, but this time, nothing. He just says 'each shall point the way to its brother.' I have no idea what that means."

  "We could go back to Ordlan Green," Iggy offered, "ask the stag if he knows."

  Syn waved this off. "The Fatherlord's curse is still manageable. I don't want to go back there until I have to."

  The left corner of Angbar's mouth drooped slightly as he spoke. "What about Keswick? The Prince?"

  "Harth is supposed to be there. It would be good to talk to him about this"—Syntal indicated the wardbook—"and see if he has any ideas."

  The Prince, Lyseira thought. I wonder if he knows . . . if any of them know. The weight of her new knowledge threatened to crush her, but she didn't know what to do about it. She was ashamed to admit it, but there was a part of her that desperately wanted to go backward—to forget everything she'd learned, go back to Southlight, marry Keithe Bakerson, and pretend none of this had ever happened. That was impossible, of course, but even if it weren't—

  Keithe is probably dead, she realized, and if not, he probably hates me anyway.

  "Rev'naas take Harth." Helix looked at Lyseira. "You said it was all a lie. Do you really believe that?"

  Throughout her life, her belief in the sanctity of the Church had been second only to her belief in Akir Himself. Not two months ago, the words she'd spoken earlier would've appalled her. But where that bedrock of faith had once rested, only a blasted crater remained. "I do."

  "Then I want to tell the King."

  "Retash said the King was on a journey," Seth interjected. "His son―"

  "The King, the Prince, whoever—I want to tell him." Helix burst to his feet. "Everything they did to me, to us, to Matthew! It was all . . ." Outrage boiled in his eyes, straining the limits of his tongue. "Matthew was right! The whole time! They don't speak for God, they only speak for themselves! And they—God, they killed him! Someone should know!" He started pacing, punching his thigh as he walked. He threw a wild look at Seth. "Your master said he was holding public audiences, right? Isn't that the whole reason Harth went there?"

  "He did," Seth said. "But that doesn't mean―"

  "So we can reach him. We can tell him."

  "I don't think that's the kind of thing he had in mind when he opened the audiences to the public," Angbar managed.

  "Who cares?" Helix threw back. "The point is we can tell him."

  "Say we do tell him," Iggy put in. "What do you expect him to do about it?"

  "I don't know!" Helix cried, exasperated. "Go to war with them? Kick them out of the kingdom? Make the Fatherlord realize that someone knows he's a liar?"

  There may be something to this, Lyseira realized. It may be the only way. "It would be up to him to decide," she said, and Helix snapped and pointed at her as if he'd just spotted an angel descending from heaven. "Maybe he has other options, other possibilities we just don't know about."

  "Exactly. Exactly!"

  Iggy looked skeptical. "M'sai, but why would he even believe us? We're going to tell him . . . what, that―?"

  "That we know the Church is full of sehk because your sword glowed blue," Angbar said, "and took us to a magical land with talking cats, where we never actually saw the first Fatherlord start the Church based on a lie, but we're fairly sure that's what happened after we left." He rubbed his temple. "I mean, I'd believe us."

  Helix looked back and forth between them. "We can't just ignore this. I know it's hard to explain, but you know it was real. You were there. We all saw it."

  "We did." Lyseira stood up. "I'll go with you, Helix."

  "They're going to arrest you." Angbar's lisp leant the warning a certain blood-chilling legitimacy. "And they're going to drag you off somewhere and torture you until you admit to killing Matthew—assuming they even still care about that."

  "Retash said most of the clerics had left Keswick," Seth said. "If that's still true, this may be the only chance to enter the city without getting captured."

  "Yes," Angbar returned, "because of the Dedication, which was a month ago!"

  "They might not be back yet." Seth shrugged and looked to Lyseira. "I go where you go."

  Helix's wild finger wagged at Seth now. "That's a good point. We have to get there fast. It might not be too late."

  "If we're careful, I think we'll be all right." Syntal touched Angbar's shoulder. "And I would like to find Harth, like I said."

  "Oh, A'jhul." Angbar put his head in his hands.

  Iggy looked around. "I have to be honest. I don't care about the Church and I don't think the King can do anything about it anyway." He nodded at Syntal. "But if you think Harth ca
n help us figure out how to break the next Seal, I'll help you find him."

  Helix clapped—a single, sharp crack that echoed in the broken tower like a detonation. "Good. Then it's settled."

  ii. Isaic

  He woke from a dream about his mother. He couldn't remember what she'd said or how she'd looked, but he remembered how disappointed she'd been in him.

  How bitterly, crushingly disappointed.

  The memory left him nailed to his bed, soaked in sweat. Darkness still pervaded his bedchamber, but the soft grey of dawn lined the contours of his drawn drapes. Slowly, shapes emerged from the dimness: his wardrobe, his bookshelf. One of them asked, "Are you well?"

  "Yes, Harad." His Preserver didn't startle him anymore, even if it was unusual for the man to speak. He forced himself to sit up, to shed the night's accusations. "Just dreams."

  "You were talking in your sleep."

  "I imagine I was." God only knows what I said, he thought, but truth be, Harad already knew his dirtiest secrets. Nothing he could have said would surprise his Preserver. Harad had been Isaic's Preserver since infancy, but when Isaic had grown old enough to ask about him, his parents said he was trustworthy—that he'd taken vows of secrecy and loyalty. Isaic's mother had always had reservations about these vows, but in practice, Isaic's trust or distrust of his Preserver had little bearing on reality. The man never left. Isaic had no choice but to rely on the strength of his oath, and Harad had never betrayed that trust.

  Groaning, Isaic flopped to his side and forced his eyes closed. He groped after sleep, hoping to catch it for a few more hours before it escaped for the day. But just as it came within his grasp, Harad said, "Your Highness."

  Isaic woke at once and bolted upright. Harad never initiated a conversation; he only spoke warnings. "What? What is it?"

  The Preserver nodded toward the draped windows, whose grey light suddenly flickered with scarlet and viridian. A Rending, Isaic thought, his heart suddenly pounding. A fourth one.

  He scrambled to his window, unashamed of his nakedness—Harad had seen it all a thousand times over—and threw open the drapes. "Another one? Already?" The last hadn't been even a month ago, but here it was: as potent as it was silent, shredding the clouds with iridescence. Maybe they'll keep coming, Angelica's voice whispered, again and again, quicker and quicker, until the sky loses its color and the sun loses its meaning, and that will be the Earth's last day.