He looked at the rigid, pale face with its strange and terrible smile. “The beard and mustache are made of real human hair and were applied by someone who knew his business. Such a disguise required careful planning and forethought. She must have agreed at the outset to sacrifice herself for the Warlock should that become necessary. The Warlock was her lover. She ran away from home, to go to him and to the opium he fed her.”
“How do you know she was taking opium?” Sir Ander asked.
“When her parents first found her, wandering aimlessly about the city, they thought her ravings were the result of ‘demonic possession.’ In truth, the seizures were brought about by the removal of the drug to which she had become addicted. I have seen the same behavior among patients in the infirmary who were given opium in honey for the pain of broken limbs. In some instances, when the opium is taken away, these patients appear to have been seized by demons.”
The priest drew back Elaina’s robes and pointed to two small marks on the young girl’s neck.
“That is how she died. When the Warlock placed the viper on her chest and covered it with her robes, she knew that it must eventually bite her.”
“But why would she do such thing?” Brother Barnaby asked, his voice soft with dismay.
“To give the man she adored the opportunity to escape, of course,” said Father Jacob. “He needed time to evade our pursuit and this poor child provided it.”
“He escapes, leaving her and everyone else in his cult to die. I hope he rots in Hell!” Sir Ander said savagely. “He was warned in advance of our coming.”
“Yes,” Father Jacob said and he added bitterly, in sudden anger, “As if we needed more proof than the fact that I walked into his trap and now eleven men are dead!”
“But who could have warned him? No one knew except you and me and the viscount…”
Sir Ander saw the grim look on the priest’s face. “The viscount? You can’t be serious! Why warn the very person he wanted us to catch? His soldiers were the ones who died in the assault.”
“I doubt that he meant to,” said Father Jacob. “We will probably find he has a servant in the pay of the Warlock.”
The priest rose to his feet and dusted off his hands. “We are not dealing with a lunatic, Sir Ander. We are dealing with a young man who is operating with a purpose, a young man with someone even more intelligent behind him.”
“You are talking about the Sorceress. But what purpose can there possibly be in torturing and murdering people? Other than”-Sir Ander glanced askance at Brother Barnaby and lowered his voice-“for sadistic sexual pleasure…”
“That is part of it, certainly,” said Father Jacob. He glanced about at the room, at the corpses in the alcoves. “But I believe it has more to do with the terror these gruesome crimes generate among the populace. Unlike most criminals, who seek to hide their crimes, this young man performs his openly. He wants people to know what he is doing. This entire part of the country has been in a state of panic for weeks, what with the discovery of mutilated bodies in farmers’ fields and a missing viscount’s daughter. All designed to awaken public interest and outrage and draw attention to the Warlock. Even my arrival feeds into this frenzy.”
“But why?” Sir Ander asked, bewildered. “To what end?”
“I very much fear, my friend, that the Warlock wants me to look at him because he does not want me looking at something else.”
Father Jacob stood for long moments lost in thought, then he roused himself.
“Well, we have done all we can here.” Father Jacob glanced at Brother Barnaby and his voice softened. “I believe you should say the prayer for the dead, Brother.”
Sir Ander and Father Jacob bowed their heads and folded their hands as Brother Barnaby, his face soft with sorrow and compassion, knelt down to close the staring eyes and say a prayer for all the souls lost and wandering in darkness…
Sir Ander gave up trying to sleep. He felt the need to talk, yet he knew better than to wake Father Jacob. Sir Ander opened the hatch, located in the front of the Retribution, and peered out.
“Would you mind if I join you, Brother?” he asked the monk.
“I would like the company, sir,” said Brother Barnaby, pleased.
The driver’s station on the Retribution was located in the front of the yacht and, of necessity, was partially open to the elements. The black-lacquered hull enclosed the cabin and storage rooms and supported a small mast and a ballast balloon. Wings swept back from the curve of the prow, running the length of the twenty-foot hull. Small airscrews were mounted at the rear of each wing, close to the hull. Polished brass rails ran along the roof of the cabin. Brass lanterns, mounted every four feet, and brass hardware for the doors and windows completed the yacht’s regal look. The symbol of the Arcanum: a crossed sword and a staff over which burns a flame set on a quartered black-and-gold shield, was painted on both sides of the hull.
Brother Barnaby took pride in the yacht. He saw to it that the brass was always polished to a high sheen, though Father Jacob maintained caustically that polishing the brass every day was a waste of time.
Sir Ander joined the monk at the driver’s seat and settled himself on the bench behind the windscreen.
Brother Barnaby glanced at him. “Do you mind if we talk of what happened this night, sir?”
The night air was refreshing, and Sir Ander breathed deeply. The two wyverns, barely seen in the darkness, moved their wings in tandem. Brother Barnaby held the reins loosely. The gentle monk had a way with animals. He had picked and trained the wyverns himself. Wyverns were notoriously illtempered and recalcitrant, but these wyverns, guided by Brother Barnaby, were submissive and eager to please.
Sir Ander watched as the monk reached out to touch a small brass helm located to his right. The helm was set with magical constructs that glowed with a golden radiance. As his fingers touched a sigil within one particular construct, correcting a list to starboard, the color shifted red.
“What would you like to talk about, Brother?” Sir Ander asked, though he already knew.
“I do not like to talk so much as I feel the need,” said Brother Barnaby. He looked at the ballast balloon above them and frowned slightly. His fingers slid across the control panel and touched several sigils that adjusted the yacht’s trim to compensate for the slight cross breeze.
Sir Ander regarded the young monk with concern. “I feared what you witnessed tonight would upset you, Brother. Father Jacob was remiss in allowing you to come with us.”
“I needed to see, sir,” said Brother Barnaby. “As Father Jacob says, ‘if we are to fight evil, we must look it in the face, no matter how dreadful the aspect.’ ”
Sir Ander shook his head. He knew he would see the mutilated corpses in his nightmares for the rest of his life. He would have spared any man that sight, but particularly Brother Barnaby.
The young monk was a foundling. The monks of the Order of Saint Anton had discovered the babe wrapped in a blanket, left on the doorstep on a warm summer’s night. They had taken in the child and raised him.
Brother Barnaby had grown up believing himself to be a child of God. He had been nurtured and loved by the monks, who had soon discovered the child had a talent for magical healing and a way with animals. They had taught him to read and write and cipher and how to use the magic that was God’s gift. When Barnaby was older, he had studied the lore of herbs and medicines and had become adept at tending to the ills and hurts of beasts and men.
Then one day when he was sixteen years old, as he had been placing his offering of candles on the altar, Brother Barnaby’s patron saint-Saint Castigan, guardian of children and animals-had appeared to him in a vision.
“Serve this man,” said the saint. He had held his hand over the head of a man dressed in a black cassock denoting him to be a member of the Order of the Arcanum.
Brother Barnaby had never doubted that vision. He had told the abbot he was leaving to find the man revealed to him by Saint Castigan. The monks of the abbey had been upset and disturbed. The abbot had tried to dissuade the young man. He could hardly argue against Saint Castigan, however, and he had at last given Brother Barnaby permission to leave. The abbot had perhaps been well aware that if he had not given his permission, the determined young monk would have left anyway.
Brother Barnaby had walked the three hundred miles to the Citadel of the Voice, where the select few priests admitted into the Arcanum lived and worked. He had arrived at the gates barefoot and in rags, half-starved, thin and weary, but joyful. He had said simply he was here on orders from Saint Castigan to serve a man whose name he did not know. The young monk then provided them with the description of the man in his vision.
